website of Jelle Verheij, historian

Travel Snap Shots

travel snap shots past and present

Near Pirbedelan, Gürpınar district, Van (2012)

1901: "A remarkable and solitrary cliff of limestone, which in spite of the apparent inaccesibility of its sides, is crowned with the ruins of two native houses"

(Lord Percy, Highlands of Asiatic Turkey, London, 1901)

2012: The cliff is in place, but no traces of houses. Pirbedelan itself, located a few hundred meters behind the rock, was in the 19th century a mixed Armenian-Kurdish village. In the 1850s the place was seat of a nahiye müdir under the Governor of Van (Layard 1853: 361)

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