All Photos by Gertrude Bell 1909

Gertrude Bell - Judi Dagh Cloister Of The Ark Where Moslems, Jews and Christians would gather yearly to Celebrate The Flood Of Noah and their Rescue through the Ark 1909

Gertrude Bell - Assyrian Relief Along Tigris River on Judi Dagh, "Mr. King, who has visited Judi Dagh, tells me that all of the reliefs are of [Assyrian King] Sennacherib and were carved in the year 699 B.C."

Gertrude Bell - Ruins near Judi Dagh 1909

Gertrude Bell - Bridge over Tigris River towards Diyarbekr 1909

Gertrude Bell - Flying over Zograt Mountains in Iraq

Gertrude Lowthian Bell was an amazing woman who took went exploring from Aleppo along the banks of the Euphrates River down through Mesopotamia to Baghdad where she turned around and came back up the Tigris River all the way to Turkey, climbing up Cudi Dagh and continuing along the Tigris through Diyabikir the entire distance to Konia. Gertrude Bell's book, Amurath To Amurath, is a classic work with many images from 1909 and was published in 1911. The pertinent section of her voyage is detailed below.

The Babylonians, and after them the Nestorians and the Moslems, held that the Ark of Noah, when the waters subsided, grounded not upon the mountain of Ararat, but upon Judi Dagh...We climed for two hours and a half through oak woods and along the upper slopes of the hills under a precipitous crest. In the high oak woods I forgot for a few hours the stifling heat which had weighed upon us ever since we had left Mosul. Each morning, we had promised one another a cooler air as we neared the mountains; each evening the thermometer placed in the shade of my tent registered from 88 to 93 degrees Fahrenheit. As I walked through the woods I was overmastered by the desire for the snow patches that lay upon the peaks and Sefinet Nebi Nuh, the ship of the Prophet Noah, was there to serve as an excuse. We walked on for another half-hour till Kas Mattai [attractive Nestorian pastor with sturdy figure and simple open countenance who spoke Arabic, Kurdish, Syriac and his native tongue of Fellahi the peasant language of Assyrian] announced that the Ark of Noah was immediately above us. And so we came to Noah's Ark, which had run aground in a bed of scarlet tulips. There was once a famous Nestorian monastery, the Cloister of the ark, upon the summit of Mount Judi, but it was destroyed by lighting in the year of Christ 766. Upon its ruins, said Kas Mattai, the Moslems had erected a shrine, and this too has fallen; but Christian, Moselm and Jew still visit the mount upon a certain day in the summer and offer their oblations to the Prophet Noah. That which they actually see is a number of roofless chambers upon the extreme summit of the hill. They are roughly built of unsquared stones, piled together without mortar, and from wall to wall are laid tree trunks and boughs, so disposed that they may support a roofing of cloths, which is thrown over them at the time of the annual estival. The the east of these buildings there is an open court enclosed by a low stone wall. The walls both of the chambers and of the court are all, as I should judge, constructions of a recent date, and they are certainly Mohammadan. Further to the west lie the ruins of a detached chamber built of very large stones, and perhaps of an earlier date. Beneath the upper rocks upon which these edifices stand, there is a tank fed by the winter snows which had not entirely disappeared from the mountain-top. Still fruther down, upon a small plateau, are scattered fragments of a different architecture, carefully built walls, stone doorposts, and lintels showing above the level of the soil. Here, I make little doubt, was the site of the Nestorian monastery.

The prospect from the ziyarah was as wild, as rugged and as splendid as the heart could desire, and desolate beyond measure. The ridge of Judi Dagh sinks down to the north on to a tolling upland which for many miles offers ideal dwelling-places for a hardy mountain folk. There were but four villages to be seen upon it. The largest of these was Shandokh, the home of a family of Kurdish aghas whose predatory habits account for the scantiness of the population. To the east of it lay Heshtan, which is in Arabic Thamanin (the Eighty), so called because of the eight persons who were saved from the Deluge founded there the first village of the regenerated world when they descended from Jebel Judi. Further to the north an endless welter of mountains stetched between us and Lake Van. The rose, towards the east, into snowy ranges, and very far to the south-east we could see the highest snow-peaks of Tiyari, where the Nestorians, grouped under a tribal system, defend their faith with their lives against the Kurdish tribes--a hereditary warfare, marked with prodigies of valour on the part of the Christians, and with such success as the matchlock may attain over the Martini rifle. There can be no manner of doubt that I ought to have completed the pilgrimage by visiting his grave, but it lay down upon the souther slopes of Judi Dagh, and I was making holiday upon the hill-tops. Half-an-hour from the sumit we met some Kurdish shepherds. The presence fo the shepherds upon Mount Judi was not to be attributed to any pious purpose. They had come up from teh villages below to escape from the sheep tax which was about to be levied for the second time with a twelvemonth. Their lawless flocks skipped among the boulders and the snow-wreaths as light-heartedly as the wild goat, but the owners lived in anxiety, and when, half-an-hour further, we encountered a second company, they took us for soldiers and greeted us with rifle shots. Kas Mattai grasped the situation and shouted a justification for our existance, which was not received without hesitation.

"It was well," observed Kas Mattai, as we clammered down the crags, "that Abdul Mejid was not with us. They would have killed him." We ran down through the oak woods and got into camp at four in the afternoon.

"God prolong your existence!" cried Fattuh. "Have you seen the ship of the Prophet Noah?"

"Oh Fattuh," I replied, "prepare the tea. I have seen the ship of the Prophet Noah."

So it is that I subscribe in this matter to the wisdom of the Kuran: "And immediately the water abated and the decree was fulfilled and the Ark rested upon the mountain of Judi."