Muş

Muş stands at the edge of a broad plain beneath the mountains west of Lake Van. In the Armenian region of Taron it was a centre on the road between Diyarbakır and the lake, home to Armenian and Kurdish communities. Nearby monasteries, including the celebrated Surb Karapet, drew pilgrims from across Armenian lands and held a place in the stories of the princely Mamikonian family.

After passing through the hands of successive regional dynasties, Muş came under Ottoman rule in the early sixteenth century. The wars between the Ottomans and Safavids brought danger to the countryside; from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries Surb Karapet often sheltered Armenians fleeing the fighting. Its church was itself destroyed by Persian troops in the 1750s, a reminder that even a renowned sanctuary could not escape the struggles around it.