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Concept
Kars
Summary
Kars (Կարս or Ղարս; Qars; Qers) is a city in northeast Turkey. It is the seat of Kars Province and Kars District. As of 2022, its population was 91,450. Kars, in classical historiography (Strabo), was in the ancient region known as Chorzene (Χορζηνή), part of the province of Ayrarat in the Kingdom of Armenia, and later the capital of the Bagratid Kingdom of Armenia from 929–961. Currently, the mayor of Kars is Türker Öksüz. The city had an Armenian ethnic majority until it was re-captured by Turkish nationalist forces in late 1920.
The city's name may be derived from the Armenian word հարս (hars), meaning "bride". Another hypothesis has it that the name derives from the Georgian word for "the gate."
Little is known of the early history of Kars beyond the fact that, during medieval times, it had its own dynasty of Armenian rulers and was the capital of a region known as Vanand. Medieval Armenian historians referred to the city by a variety of names, including "Karuts' K'aghak'" (Kars city), "Karuts' Berd", "Amrots'n Karuts'" (both meaning Kars Fortress) and "Amurn Karuts'" (Impenetrable Kars). At some point in the ninth century (at least by 888) it entered into the domains of the Armenian Bagratunis. Kars was the capital of the Bagratid Kingdom of Armenia between 929 and 961. During this period the town's cathedral, later known as the Church of the Holy Apostles, was built.
In 963, shortly after the Bagratuni seat was transferred to Ani, Kars became the capital of a separate independent kingdom, again called Vanand. However, the extent of its actual independence from the Kingdom of Ani is uncertain: it was always in the possession of the relatives of the rulers of Ani, and, after Ani's capture by the Byzantine Empire in 1045, the Bagratuni title "King of Kings" held by the ruler of Ani was transferred to the ruler of Kars.
In 1064, just after the capture of Ani by Alp Arslan (leader of the Seljuk Turks), the Armenian king of Kars, Gagik-Abas, paid homage to the victorious Turks so that they would not lay siege to his city.
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