Van
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Archeological Research of Van" in 1967.

History

Ca. 840 B.C. the Urartian ruler Sardur I built a citadel and the town of Tushpa, the capital of his empire, on the rocky outcrop. To the west of the modern town this later became Van fortress (Van Kalesi). The region was inhabited in the third millennium B.C. by the Hurrians, regarded as the ancestors of the Urartians and also as the first tribe to create a political and cultural entity in eastern Anatolia. Assyrians attacked the east of the Hurrian lands, forcing the natives to emigrate to the north and into the Van region where they formed separate small kingdoms. The oldest Urartian kingdom, called "Bianli" (people of Bian), had two capitals under King Aramu in the still unidentified places of Sugunia and later Arzashgun (probably to the south and northwest of Lake Van respectively). Sardur I is regarded as the founder of the empire when he established a new capital of Tushpa (Van Kalesi) by Lake Van in 840 B.C. The kingdom of Bian was later of course to become Van.

Even when the Urartian Empire (Biani Empire) was at its greatest, it had no access to the sea. Under Ishpuini (830-810 B.C.) new buildings were erected in Tushpa and the town enjoyed a measure of prosperity. His son Menua, other children and grandchildren concerned themselves with irrigating the farmland and with building a defensive system based on warning beacons located at a number of fortresses within sight of each other. Ishpuini's grandson Sardur II was responsible for creating cultural centers such as the great open-air Temple of Tushpa, but in 743 B.C., territory in northern Syria was lost to the Assyrians. Further defeats to the Assyrians continued under his son Rusa I (735-714 B.C.) and were warning signs to the Urartian Empire. Nomadic threats from steppe tribes such as the Cimmerians and later the Scythians heralded the end of the empire, finally brought to an end by the Medes in 590 B.C.

More recent history

Before the Armenian king Tigranes the Great (95-54 B.C.) extended Van as the center of his empire, the fortress belonged to the Persian satrapy of Armenia and then after Alexander the Great to the kingdom of Pontus. The Armenian Reshtuni dynasty lasted until an Arab raid in 634. In 1071 Van fell to the Marvanid dynasty and then to the Karakoyun Ogullari ("Black Rams"). The ensuing dispute between the Ottomans and the Persians ended in favor of the Ottomans but the old Ottoman townbeneath the citadel was destroyed when Russian troops withdrew in 1917.