Van is a city in eastern Turkey's Van Province, on the eastern shore of Lake Van. It is the capital and largest city of Van Province.
Van has a long history as a major urban area. It has been a large city since the first millennium BCE, initially as Tushpa, the capital of the kingdom of Urartu from the 9th century BCE to the 6th century BCE, and later as the center of the Armenian kingdom of Vaspurakan. Turkic presence in Van and in the rest of Anatolia started as a result of Seljuk victory at the Battle of Malazgirt (1071) against the Byzantine Empire.Haldon, John. Byzantium at War AD 600 - 1453. p. 46. ISBN 1-84176-360-8.Holt, Peter Malcolm; Lambton, Ann Katharine Swynford & Lewis, Bernard (1977). The Cambridge History of Islam. pp. 231–232.Barber, Malcolm. The Crusader States Yale University Press. 2012. ISBN 978-0-300-11312-9. Page 9
Van was densely populated by Armenians until the Armenian genocide in the 1910s. Today, it is mostly inhabited by Kurds.
History
Archaeological excavations and surveys carried out in Van Province indicate that the history of human settlement in this region goes back at least as far as 5000 BCE. The Tilkitepe Mound, which is on the shores of Lake Van and a few kilometres to the south of Van Castle, is the only source of information about the oldest culture of Van.
Urartu
Under the ancient name of Tushpa, Van was the capital of the Urartian kingdom in the 9th century BCE. The early settlement was centered on the steep-sided bluff now known as Van Castle (Van Kalesi), close to the edge of Lake Van and a few kilometers west of the modern city. Urartian cuneiform inscriptions dating to the 8th and 7th centuries BCE have been found here. The name 'Van' comes from the Urartian endonym Biaina.Edmund Herzig, Marina Kurkchiyan, The Armenians: Past And Present In The Making Of National Identity, p. 31. A "conservative" estimate by Charles A. Burney put the population of Tushpa and its suburbs at 50,000.
Kingdom of Armenia The region came under the control of the Orontids in the 7th century BCE and quickly later the Persians in the mid-6th century BCE. Van Fortress, located outside Van city center, holds an inscribed stereotyped trilingual inscription of Xerxes the Great from the 5th century BCE upon a smoothed section of the rock face, some above the ground near the fortress. The inscription survives in near perfect condition and is divided into three columns of 27 lines written in (from left to right) Old Persian, Babylonian, and Elamite. In 331 BCE, Van was conquered by Alexander the Great and after his death became part of the Seleucid Empire. By the early 2nd century BCE it was part of the Kingdom of Armenia. It became an important center during the reign of the Armenian king, Tigranes II, who founded the city of Tigranakert in the 1st century BCE.The Journal of Roman Studies – Page 124 by Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies In the early centuries BCE, it fell to the emerging Arsacid dynasty of Parthia until the 3rd century CE. However, it also fell once to the Arsacid dynasty of Armenia in this timespan. In the History of Armenia attributed to Movses Khorenatsi, the city is called Tosp, from Urartian Tushpa.
Byzantines, Sassanids, and the Artsrunis
Following the fall of the Parthians and the emergence of the Neo-Persian Empire, better known as the Sasanian Empire,The Met Museum Website: The Sasanian Empire (224–651 CE) the town fell into the possession of the latter. During the over 700 years-long Roman-Persian Wars, some of the wars were waged at and around the location of modern-day Van. The Byzantine Empire briefly held the region from 628 to 640, following the victory in the climactic Byzantine–Sasanian War of 602–628, after which it was invaded by the Muslim Arabs, who consolidated their conquests as the province of Arminiya.The Cambridge Medieval History Series volumes 1–5 by Plantagenet Publishing, 2nd to last paragraph on the page linked to. (no page numbers shown on the online document) Decline in Arab power eventually allowed local Armenian rulers to re-emerge, with the Artsruni dynasty soon becoming the most powerful.Iranica Online Website: Artsruni Initially dependent on the rulers of the Kingdom of Ani, they declared their independence in 908, founding the Armenian Kingdom of Vaspurakan.Armenian History Website: Kingdom of Vaspurakan The kingdom had no specific capital: the court would move as the king transferred his residence from place to place, such as Van city, Vostan, Aghtamar, etc. In 1021 the last king of Vaspurakan, John-Senekerim Artsruni, ceded his entire kingdom to the Byzantine Empire, which established the Vaspurakan theme on the former Artsruni territories. Van was called Eua or Eva () during Byzantine rule.
Seljuk Empire and Rum Incursions by the Seljuk Turks into Vaspurakan started in the 1050s. After their victory in 1071 at the battle of Manzikert, the entire region fell under their control."The Turks in History", Roderic H. Davison, Essays in Ottoman and Turkish History, 1774–1923: The Impact of the West, (University of Texas Press, 1990), 3. After them, local Muslim rulers emerged, such as the Ahlatshahs and the Kurdish Ayyubids (1207). For a 20-year period, Van was held by the Anatolian Seljuk Sultanate until the 1240s when it was conquered by the Mongols. In the 14th century, Van was held by the Timurids, followed by the Turkoman Kara Koyunlu and Ak Koyunlu confederations.
Turco-Iranian rivalry and the Ottoman era
The first half of the 15th century saw the Van region become a land of conflict as it was disputed by the Ottoman Empire and the neighboring Persian Safavid Empire. The Safavids captured Van in 1502, as it went naturally with all former territories of the Ak Koyunlu. The Ottomans took the city in 1515 following the climactic Battle of Chaldiran and held it for a short period. The Safavids retook it in 1520 but the Ottomans gained an almost definite hold of it in 1548 during another Ottoman-Safavid war. Ottoman control over the town was confirmed in the 1555 Peace of Amasya which came as a result after the end of the war. They first made Van into a sanjak dependent on the Erzurum eyalet, and later into a separate Van eyalet in about 1570. In 1604, the Safavids under king Abbas the Great recaptured Van alongside other swaths of lost territories in Eastern Anatolia. However, Ottoman control over it was at last now made final and definite in 1639 with the Treaty of Zuhab.
During the early 1900s, the city of Van had eleven Armenian schools and ten Turkish schools. Towards the second half of the 19th century Van began to play an increased role in the politics of the Ottoman Empire due to its location near the borders of the Persian, Russian and Ottoman Empire, as well as its proximity to Mosul. During the period leading up to the breakup of the Ottoman Empire, Armenians were well represented in the local administration.Hewsen 2000, p. 39.
Ottoman Era demographics The demographics of Ottoman Van are a debated and contentious point as they relate directly to claims of ownership by either side prior to the outbreak of World War I. For the city of Van itself it has been estimated that it had around 50,000 inhabitants prior to World War I, of whom 30,000 were Armenian and 20,000 were Muslims. Based on the official 1914 Ottoman census, the population of Van province consisted of 179,422 Muslims and 67,797 Armenians.Values as printed in the official statistics from 1914. The Ottoman census figures include only male citizens, excluding women and children, and according to more recent research, an estimate for Van province (including women and children) is that it had 313,000 Muslims, 130,000 Armenians, and 65,000 others, including Assyrians.Justin McCarthy: Muslims and Minorities. New York University Press, 1983, p. 110 f.
The demographics of Van are a greatly debated point also given the changing provincial borders. For example, in 1875 the province was divided; Van and Hakkari were separated, only to be rejoined in 1888, drastically changing the census numbers. Some writers argue that this merging was done to keep the Armenians from forming a majority.Hewsen 2000, p. 35. In 1862 it was estimated that in Van there were 90,100 Christians (including Syriac Christians) and 95,100 Muslims. The French Consul in Van reported that in Van and Bitlis 51.46% were Kurds, 32.70% were Armenians and 5.53% were Turks.Ter Minassian, ch.10, p. 180. On the other hand, the Armenian Patriarchate of Constantinople estimated 185,000 Armenians in Van, 18,000 Assyrians, 72,000 Kurds, 47,000 Turks, 25,000 Yezidis, 5,000 Zazas and 3,000 Gypsies.Ter Minassian, ch.10, p. 181. Both sides have been accused of over-counting the numbers at the time given the Armenian genocide and population statistics became important during the Berlin Conference.Sarkis Y. Karayan: "Demography of Van Province, 1844–1914". In: Richard G. Hovannisian: Armenian Van/Vaspurakan. Mazda Publishers, Costa Mesa/CA 2000, p. 196.
The Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878 During this war the Kurdish Sheikh Jelaludin led thousands of soldiers to massacre Armenians of the province and destroyed and plundered many of their villages. These events are described in Armenia and the Campaign of 1877 by British war correspondent Charles B. Norman and in the fictional novella Jalaleddin by the Armenian novelist Raffi in very similar terms.
World War I and Armenian genocide
The Armenian genocide in Van Province started in late 1914 with attacks by the Ottoman Empire's Special Organization and affiliated paramilitaries. The regional Albanian administrator, Djevdet Bey, was reported to have said that "We have cleansed the Armenians and Syriac Christians from Azarbaijan, and we will do the same in Van".Akçam, p. 201. Numerous reports from Ottoman officials, such as a parliament deputy, the governor of Aleppo as well as the German consul in Van, suggested that deliberate provocations against the Armenians were being orchestrated by the local government. In mid-April 1915, Cevdet Bey ordered the execution of four Armenian leaders,Morgenthau, Henry. Ambassador Morgenthau's Story, p. 205. Wayne State University Press, 2003. Ussher, Clarence Douglass. An American Physician in Turkey. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1917, p. 236. and he demanded that all Armenian males of military age gather before him, which drove the Armenians to take up arms in self-defense. On the other hand, historian and sociologist Taner Akçam acknowledges that in the case of Van, the deportations may have been driven by military necessityAkçam, p. 202. and states the resistance in Van should be examined as a separate case, although this is very similar to official turkish positions denying the Armenian Genocide.Akçam, p. 200.