Kars-city in northeast Turkey

no one lives here, the buildings are all destroyed  and looks like a nuclear bomb went off here but 1000 years ago this city was one of the  largest cities in the world. It was the prospering capital of the kingdom of Armenia  in this post we're going to explore the ghost city of Ani and learn about its fascinating history.

 

okay so this is my second day in Kars which is a  city in eastern Turkey at an elevation of around 1700 meters so this place gets pretty cold this is a very historical place. more than a thousand years ago Kars used to be the capital  of the kingdom of Armenia that ruled this place and even not so long ago like a hundred years  ago this was a city under the Russian empire this big church that you see behind me the  Feiyhe mosque was actually built as a church and then converted later to a mosque so it looks  very interesting like a church from the outside but with minarets and a mosque on the  inside but today we're about to go to this other city which is a lot more historic  but around 40 kilometers away from here called Ani

 

I’ve just arrived to the edge of the old city  of Ani and this place is really right next to the Armenian border. My phone changed its time  because it thinks I’m in Armenia right now so I’m inside the northern walls of the ancient  city of Ani. There used to be walls all around the place but most of it got destroyed over the years  You can even see all the towers and the old gates and the walls. So the kingdom of Ani  first gained prominence in the 5th century AD so back then it was really just important as  a hilltop fortress for the Armenians but a couple of hundred years later it became a much  more important place. S o between 9th century ad and early 11th century 80 the kingdom of Armenia  was ruled by this dynasty who sort of built the foundations of a very extensive kingdom in eastern  Anatolia and in 961 a.d they moved the capital of the Armenian kingdom from Kars to right here in  Ani and then all the Armenian Christians followed and very soon it became the undisputed center  of Armenia and the city became very wealthy and very powerful as it grew rapidly and became a  major trading hub with its major trading partners being the Byzantine empire the Persian empire  and Arabs. So by the 11th century a.d this place  

 

already had over 100 000 people and this place was  nicknamed the city with 40 gates or the city with  

1 0001 churches and no one really knows that this  place actually had 1001 churches but there's still the remains of 50 churches left to this day over here  So there's this archaeological site behind me where they're still digging up the remains  of buildings that still need to be excavated

 

so right now I’m at the cathedral of Ani which is  the largest building that's still standing in this entire complex. It was built in 1001 a.d during the  very golden age of the kingdom of Armenia. It's a pretty cool structure as you can see behind me but  it's also being heavily renovated on every side because uh it's falling apart. The roof is  entirely missing if you haven't noticed yet

 

so that church behind me is the church  of the holy apostles that was also built during the golden age of Ani but it's almost  completely destroyed. half of it completely fell apart during a storm in the 20th century  which kind of brings them to the point that there's a lot of restoration work going on  right now at this place and in 2016 this w as declared a UNESCO world heritage site but before  that it was really on the verge of destruction  

 

in 1020 ad the king of the kingdom of Armenia  died and his two sons started fighting about who would get to rule the kingdom  that was essentially the end of the golden age of Armenia. Soon after that the Byzantines came  and took over but not so long after that in 1064 the Muslims Seljuk Turks came and conquered the  city and completely massacred the population eight years after that in 1072 they sold the  whole city to this other Kurdish Muslim dynasty

 

so after this Kurdish dynasty took over there  was this huge mosque built in 1072 that's still surviving to this day. It was called the mosque  of Manuchir named after Manuchir who was the highest ranking member at the dynasty of that  time the building looks like half of it's been blown off almost but the minaret is still standing  intact and on the north side of the minaret you can still see the words bismillah written on the top  the insides of the mosque is also very well preserved but looks like we can't enter that place  right now. So after the seljuks took over the city this place changed hand a lot of times between  dynasties. There were Muslims and Christians but in the early 1200s some Armenian dynasty  finally took over the place again and it even prospered for a very short while and  that's when they built this church behind me which is the most preserved church in Ani  right now called the church of saint gregory

 

well unfortunately that little moment  of prospering didn't last too long and in the middle of the 13th century  the Mongols came sacked the city massacred everyone again. This city  never really recovered from that it slowly lost importance in whatever empire  ruled the area and was never the same again something very important that i have to discuss  is that this city is located right across the Armenian border so the other side of that river  is Armenia. You can still see a broken bridge  

 

that used to lead to Armenia but you don't see  any Armenians here. Why is that? Well let me tell you the full story. So in the 19th century there  was no independent kingdom of Armenia but there were provinces controlled by Armenians in the  ottoman empire and the Russian empire so this was one of those provinces that was controlled by  the ottoman empire. Then in 1878, if you watched my Sarajevo video you should remember that the  ottomans lost a lot of land in the Bakans in Europe.

 

They also lost a lot of land to Russia as  well and this became part of the Russian empire and this whole region was part of the Russian  empire from 1878 up until the end of world war one when the Russian empire collapsed. For a brief  period of two years there was the first republic of Armenia that was ruling over this place  but that only lasted two years because Kemal Attaturk came along and created the modern state  of Turkey and basically drove out all Christians ,Armenians and Greeks out of its area and it's kind of sad but there's still no border between Armenia and Turkey a hundred years  later because relations still are not the best so Armenians can't come visit we can only hope  that this will change someday soon in the future that is it for this post.

 

I’ll catch you guys on the  next one from somewhere…