Varzahan monastery
Coordinates: 40 ° 20 ′ 0 ″ N , 40 ° 7 ′ 0 ″ E
Varzahan ( Armenian Վարզահան , Turkish Uğrak Kiliseleri or Varzahan Kiliseleri ) was an Armenian church founded in the 12th century near the village of Uğrak (before the renaming of Varzahan ), 10 km northwest of Bayburt in the Black Sea region of Turkey . The monastery was gradually destroyed between the 1920s and mid-1950s.
history
It is located in a settlement called Varzahan in the Upper Armenia Province of historical Armenia . Varzahan was a large Armenian settlement northwest of the city of Baberd (now Bayburt ), within the northernmost district of Sper of Upper Armenia .
The Assyriologist Austen Henry Layard described the place in 1849 while traveling from Trebizond to Mosul :
"The only place of any interest, passed during our ride, was a small Armenian village, the remains of a larger, with the ruins of three early Christian churches, or Baptisteries."
gallery
Lynch's photograph of the cemetery from 1898.
Idealized drawing of the octagonal church by Layard
See also
Web links
- The Varzahan Churches. VirtualAni
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Revue des Études Arméniennes , Volume 2, 1965, page 184
- ^ Henry Austen Layard: Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon . New York 1853, p. 6