Hoşap Castle

Hoşap Castle (Turkish: Hoşap kalesi, Armenian: Խոշաբ բերդ) is a large medieval castle located in the village of Güzelsu (previously Hoşap), Gürpınar District, Van Province, Eastern Anatolia and/or Western Armenia, Turkey. It is at a distance of approximately 50 km to the city center of Van. Most of the surviving structure was built in 1643 by Sarı Süleyman Bey, chief of the Kurdish Mahmudi tribe.[1] Hoşap or Xoşabê means "beautiful water" in Kurdish.[2] Fortress received its name from the river of the same name.[3]

Hoşap Castle

The former town of Hoşap lay on the flat ground north of the castle rock and in the enclosed space on the opposite side of the castle from the road; the present village extends into this space. The town was defended at one corner by the castle and elsewhere by a wall, which originally started from the ends of the castle’s two cliffs. Built of mud, and toothed with the remains of mud battlements, the wall of the early Ottoman period can still be seen in stretches.

On the north of the former town it now starts from a point beyond but the line of the cliff, near the Van road and extends along a natural ridge eastwards. From the castle’s southerly cliff the wall crosses the low saddle to the north-east. The two walls meet at the summit of the next hill, in order to keep control of all the land commanding the town. Beyond this hill’s summit stretches a seemingly empty expanse of low, spreading hills.

Until the '50s of the 19th century, the fortress-city of Khoshab had about 1,500 families, including 1,000 Armenians. Until 1847, semi-independent Kurdish beys also resided there, but in the same year the Ottoman government, occupying the fortress, abolished their semi-independent rule.