Ardjish

Ardjish is a small and ancient town on the north-eastern bank of Lake Van, which in the Middle Ages was still called the Lake of Ardjish. Its existence is attested from the Urartian period and, more explicitly, by the Graeco-Roman geographers. The Arabs occupied it for a time in the days of 'Uthman, but it remained part of the Armenian principalities until the eighth century; from 772 it was incorporated into the Kaysite emirate of Akhlat. ¹

In the tenth century it belonged to the Marwanids. In 1054 the Saljuq sultan Tughril Beg retook it. When the Saljuq empire was divided at the end of the fifth/eleventh century, it passed to the principality of the Shahs of Armenia of Akhlat and, early in the seventh/thirteenth century, to their Ayyubid successors. ¹

Pillaged repeatedly in the thirteenth century by the Georgians and the Mongols, it was still important enough for the Ilkhanid wazir 'Ali Shah to fortify it in the early eighth/fourteenth century; the entry says it had not been fortified before. Later it suffered from Timur's devastation and from the disorders of the Perso-Ottoman wars. It was still the chief town of an Ottoman district in the seventeenth century, but the growth of Van and the northward movement of the lake waters told against it. The last inhabitants left about the middle of the nineteenth century, and the ruins now lie mostly under water. A small modern township has grown up half an hour to the north. ¹