Ara Lezk, the Village Named After a Legend.

Vahe H. Apelian

The story of the Assyrian Queen Shamiram's infatuation with the most handsome Armenian King, Ara the Beautiful, is a commonly known legend. The Armenian King Ara, loyal to his wife Queen Nvart, had refused the powerful Assyrian Queen's advances enraging her. 

 I had thought that the legend of the most handsome Armenian king Ara, had only persisted in our history books until I stumbled upon a book in my late uncle Dr. Antranig Chalabian's extensive library. The books is titled "From Van to Detroit: Surviving the Armenian Genocide" and is authored by Souren Aprahamian. It turns out an Armenian village had sprung around that small hill on top of which, tradition held that Queen Shamiram placed Ara's body so that the gods would come and lick his wounds and bring him to life. The Armenians called these gods, which were thought to be in the form of dogs, haralez (հարալեզ). 

After accepting Christianity as their state religion, the Armenians erected a chapel on that very hill top, where pagan gods once supposedly descended. The village that has sprung around that hill was called Ara Lezk which, literally means Ara Lick, much like the legend claimed.

I quote the following passage from the book: 

"I was born in 1897 in all Armenian village named Lezk, which is a couple of miles north of the city of Van and an equal distance east of Lake Van. Lezk is at a higher elevation than the city and the lake. Present day geography places this area in Eastern Turkey, just west of the Iranian border.

Ara Lezk acquired its name as a result of historical as well as legendary events. In the ninth century B.C., Queen Sameramis of Assyria, following the death of her husband, King Ninos, offered marriage and joint rule to the young King of Armenia, Ara. Because of his beauty, he was called Ara Keghetsik (Ara the beautiful). King Ara rejected the queen's offer, saying he was already married to his beautiful Queen Nvart, and it was not the customs of his people to have more than one wife. Monogamy was prevalent not only among the royal family but throughout the pagan Armenia of those days.

Following Ara's refusal, Sameramis invaded Armenia. In the battle that followed, Ara was killed. The Armenians fought valiantly even after their kind fell. Sameramis to discourage the Armenians had one of her soldiers wear Ara's armor. She then declared that she captured the Armenian king and that resistance was futile. The Armenian army was scattered, and Samiramis placed Ara's body on the altar atop the citadel of solid rock, now known Amenaperkitch, so that her sacred dogs could lick him and restore life in him. The word lick in Armenian is lizel, thus the name Ara Lezk, the licking of Ara. The village has carried this name for centuries, to this day. We left it for the last time in 1918.

The citadel Amernaperkitch is a solid rock formation, above three hundred feet high, perpendicular on three sides –north, east, and south. An earthen ramp on the west side comes close to the summit. From there, steps carved in the rock make it possible to reach the top and the ruins of the castle that once adorned it. A long time ago, a small chapel consisting of a single room, approximately twelve by twelve feet had been built. Turkish law forbade building places of worship, but once built, they were not destroyed. The villagers had built this chapel in one night. It was called Amenaperkitch, the Savior of All, and this was the name given the citadel. The neighboring villages participated in its annual feast day. The southern face of the citadel rock served as the northern wall of the village's main church."

Gravure: The Lezk (current Kalecik) village (Source: Jean Marie Chopin, César Famin, Eugène Boré, L'univers, vol. 2, 1838) (Houshamadyan)

As to the Assyrian queen Sameramis, she is known in Armenian history as Queen Shamiram. The eminent poet Roupen Sevag named his younger child and only daughter after her. Shamiram Sevag passed away in France on October 17, 2016, at the ripe age of 102. 

The late Simon Simonian speculated on King Ara rejecting the Assyrian queen's infatuation if nor her love, in his book titled "Ge Khntrvi Khachatsevel", which literally means, "Please Overlap". In that book, Simon Simonian had luminaries of the Armenian history come on stage to a full capacity filled audience and dwell upon as to  what could have been to the course of our history if only their actions were heeded. Queen Shamiram, in her turn, stated the following:

"Ara refused my love. I had promised him my kingdom along with my heart. He would have become the king of two countries, the kingdom of Ararat and Assyria because these two countries would have ceased fighting each other to extinction. Handsome Ara rejected both the throne and my heart.

Had Ara joined me, the great majority of the oil wells of Mosul, some 95%, would have belonged to the Armenians. With Calouste Gulbenkian's 5%, the Armenians would have owned all. Just for the sake of Nvart khanoum (lady), Ara lost two kingdoms and the oil wells of Mosul"

I leave upon the readers to contemplate as to what could have been the course of our history if  King Ara would not have been faithful to his wife Queen Nvart to a “fault”.

The location of the once Armenian village and its current designation.