Karakilise

Karakilise takes its name, meaning “black church”, from a medieval Armenian church in the highland country of Alashkert. The district's older centre was Alashkert, an important town among the mountain plains east of Malazgirt. These lands passed through the hands of Armenian rulers, Byzantines, Seljuks and the Mongol Ilkhanate. Shah Ismail's Safavids took the region in 1503; after the Battle of Chaldiran in 1514 it came under Ottoman rule. High mountains and long winters frame the valley in which the old church stood.