Note 69 — Chapter XVIII · ANI, AND THE ARMENIAN KINGDOM OF THE MIDDLE AGES

My reader is now in possession of an outline of the history of the deserted city before the walls of which he stands. He is also familiar with the large surroundings which overpower this elegant architecture—in the distance the pile of Alagöz and the dome of Ararat; far and near the undulating upland plain, deeply cañoned by the sinuous course of the Arpa Chai. But the site of Ani calls for some particular description.69 It has been built within the fork described by the meeting of two ravines which have been eroded by the action of water to a considerable depth below the level of the plain. In the more westerly of these ravines flows a small stream coming down from the Alaja Dagh (p. 330), which was known to the old priest by its older name of Tsaghkotz,70 but which some travellers have called the Alaja Chai. The more easterly is occupied by the Arpa Chai, the ancient Akhurean. Near the confluence, the two streams are only separated by a narrow spit, and their waters hiss at the base of crags composed of lava. But the greater portion of the site consists of a spacious platform, flanked on two sides by the ravines. At a distance of about a mile above the junction of the waters two small side valleys descend into the principal depressions from within the area which they enclose. The one is directed towards the west and joins the trough of the Alaja; the other pursues a south-easterly course to the chasm of the Arpa Chai. The heads of these two side valleys are separated from one another by a considerable stretch of unbroken ground. It is on that side only and along that space that the site is weak. And it is there that the double line of walls have been erected, fronted in ancient times by a moat (Fig. 70).71