Ancient Ahlat (Ahlat)

 ruins, ancient, fenced area

settled in Uratean times (900 BC), the town became a military post under the Seldshukes 1060; during the 12. - 14. century and later in the 17./18. century it reached the peak of its development.

Getting to Ahlat: Flights to Van: Turkish Airlines from İstanbul and Ankara -- daily flights. Pegasus daily from Ankara and İstanbul. Sunexpress Mondays and Wednesdays from Antalya, daily from İzmir. Regular coaches from all parts of Turkey. Buses to Tatvan/Ahlat: At least five daily to Tatvan. Hourly minibuses from Tatvan to Ahlat, 45 minutes.

There can be few more arresting sights in Turkey than the eerie cemeteries of lakeshore Ahlat, home to a forest of beautifully crafted, improbably angled tombstones interspersed with the striking, cylindrical mausoleums of medieval Islamic notables.

It certainly caught the imagination of British archeologist Austen Henry Layard, who visited Ahlat (or Akhlat as he spells it) in the mid-19th century. “At out feet, as we drew to the lake, were the gardens of the ancient city of Akhlat, leaning minarets and pointed mausoleums peeping above the trees. We rode through vast burying grounds, a perfect forest of upright stones seven or eight feet high of the richest red colour, most delicately and tastefully carved with arabesque ornaments and inscriptions in the massive character of the early Mussulman age. In the midst of them rose here and there a conical turbeh (tomb) of beautiful shape, covered with exquisite tracery. The monuments of the dead still stand, and have become the monuments of a city, itself long since crumbled into dust. Amidst orchards and gardens are scattered here and there low houses rudely built out of the remains of earlier habitations,” he wrote.

All the monuments visible today, however, are Islamic. In 1071, following the crucial battle at nearby Malazgirt (Manzikert), the town fell to the Selçuk Turks, who were quickly displaced by the Kurdish Ayyubid dynasty. They could do nothing against the Mongol onslaught of 1244, though the more moderate Ilhanid dynasty from Persia soon took over. Next up, around 1400, came the Akkoyunlu (White Sheep) Turcomans, who made the town the “capital” of their loosely knit confederation. The Ottomans weren't able to cement their hold on Ahlat until 1548, but even then the Kurdish emirs of nearby Bitlis exercised the real control.