TheArarat Plain (Armenian:Արարատյան դաշտ,romanized: Araratyan dasht[a]), calledIğdır Plain in Turkey (Turkish:Iğdır Ovası),[1] is one of the largestplains of theArmenian Highlands. It stretches west of the Sevan basin, at the foothills of theGegham mountains. In the north, the plain borders onMount Aragats, andMount Ararat in the south.
It is divided into two sections by theAras River, the northern part located inArmenia, and the southern part in modernTurkey.[2] The Turkish part of the plain is anImportant Bird Area.[3]
The Medieval Armenian historianMovses Khorenatsi recorded in hisHistory of Armenia that the Ararat plain was named afterKing Ara the Handsome, the great-grandson of Amasya.[4]
The climate of the Ararat Plain iscontinental andsemi-arid with hot summers and cold winters. The annual precipitation is about 200-250 mm. Rainfall is rare in summer. In winter, precipitation usually falls as snow.[5][6]The Ararat Plain and theLake Sevan basin experience abundant sunshine and are the sunniest areas in Armenia, receiving about 2,700 hours of sunshine a year. The shortest duration of sunshine is in the mid-mountain areas of the forest zone (about 2,000 hours). In the foothills, there is rarely a sunless day between the months of June and October.[7]
The Ararat Plain makes up 4% of Armenia's total land area, but yields 40% of the country's farm production.[7] In the Turkish part of the plain,apricot is widely produced on a 1,525 ha-area.[8]
This area has been inhabited since the Neolithic or the Early Chalcolithic times.The name 'Armenia' is written for the first time in history in the 24th-23rd centuries B.C. in theMesopotamiancuneiform inscriptions in the form 'Armani', while in the text of the same period discovered inEbla (Syria) Armenia is called 'Armi'.[9]
AtAratashen, the first pottery appears at the end of the fifth millennium BC, or before 4000 BC.[10]
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