Monastery of Surb Gevorg of Goms
Tatvan, Turkey · built 901
The Monastery of Saint George of Goms ("Saint George") was an Armenian monastery in the historic province of Vaspurakan, in present-day Turkey. The local Armenian peasants called it Jojglukh vank (Monastery of the Great Head). Goms, meaning "cowsheds", was the name of the nearest village to the monastery: this village is now called Kümüs by its Kurdish inhabitants, its official name is Çanakdüzü. The monastery lied at shores of Lake Van, within a compact and almost square fortified enclosure. The masonry of the enclosure wall is not bonded into the structure of the church, implying that it is a later construction and the church was originally free-standing. There are oval shaped defensive towers at the south-east and north-east corners of the wall. The wall's masonry shows two distinct layers: the bottom three quarters was constructed using roughly shaped but regularly laid stone blocks and the top third uses larger and less regularly shaped stones.
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