Varto

Varto lies on the southern slopes of the Bingöl Mountains, in the upper valley of a tributary of the Murat. Its villages occupied part of the old Armenian district of Arshamunik, and Armenian communities remained numerous here through the eighteenth century. Ottoman registers of 1642 include Varto among the districts of Hınıs, recording a landscape of villages and pastures in the mountains north of the Muş plain.