Harpoot

View of Harput in 1896

Harpoot (Turkish: Harput) or Kharberd (Armenian: Խարբերդ, romanized: Kharberd)[a] is an ancient town located in the Elazığ Province of Turkey. It now forms a small district of the city of Elazığ.[1] In the late Ottoman period, it fell under the Mamuret-ul-Aziz Vilayet (also known as the Harput Vilayet). Artifacts from around 2000 BC have been found in the area. The town is famous for its Harput Castle, and incorporates a museum, old mosques, a church, and the Buzluk (Ice) Cave. Harput is about 700 miles (1,100 km) from Istanbul.[2]

Harput was a largely Armenian populated region in medieval times and had a significant Armenian population until the Armenian genocide.[3][4] By the 20th century, Harput had been absorbed into Mezre (renamed Elazığ in 1937), a town on the plain below Harput that significantly grew in size in the 19th century.[1]


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  1. ^ a b Sipahi, Ali (2015). At Arm's Length: Historical Ethnography of Proximity in Harput (PhD thesis). University of Michigan. p. 1.
  2. ^ White, Edward (2017-02-03). "The Great Crime". The Paris Review. Retrieved 2020-04-09.
  3. ^ Selcuk Esenbel; Bilge Nur Criss; Tony Greenwood. American Turkish Encounters: Politics and Culture, 1830-1989. p. 78.
  4. ^ Morris, Benny; Ze’evi, Dror (2019-04-24). The Thirty-Year Genocide: Turkey's Destruction of Its Christian Minorities, 1894–1924. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-91645-6.