Note 78 — Chapter IV · VAN

When one contemplates the vast extent of the garden suburbs and the closely-packed quarters of the walled town, it is difficult to believe that not more than 30,000 people inhabit so imposing a place. Let my reader refer to the plan which accompanies this chapter. I based it originally on one published in the fine book of M. Müller-Simonis,78 and I filled it in during my daily rides. It at once enables me to dispense with a tedious topographical narrative, and serves to show the distribution of Armenians and Mussulmans. On the left of the paper is represented the rock of Van with the cuneiform inscriptions and the city or fortified town at its southern base. On the right extends the hill ridge of Toprak Kala, commencing on the west with the bold crag of Ak Köpri, and making a bay towards the gardens as it stretches in an easterly direction, presenting the side of what is actually a nearly meridional mass. Between the two lies the plain—a bower of leafy gardens, most dense along a line drawn south of Ak Köpri, but continuing westwards from the southerly outskirts of those thickly-planted quarters to the district of Shamiram or Semiramis, south of the citadel. Mussulmans and Armenians are distributed over the area of these suburbs, and they share between them the population of the walled town. Some quarters in the gardens are peopled exclusively by Armenians, some by Mussulmans, and some by both alike. The names which I have placed upon the plan are in some cases those of quarters, and in others of blocks of houses and enclosures. The citadel or rock of Van is occupied by the garrison alone, and none of the townsmen are permitted to ascend that delicious platform.