History of the Jews in Turkey modest Jewish population. According to Jewish scripture, Noah's Ark landed on the top of Mount Ararat, a mountain in the Taurus range in Eastern Anatolia, near the present-day borders of Turkey, Armenia, and Iran. Flavius Josephus, Jewish historian of the first century, notes Jewish origins for many of the cities in Asia Minor, though much of his sourcing for these passages is traditional. New Testament mention of Jewish populations in Anatolia is widespread: Iconium (now: Konya) is said to have a synagogue in Acts 14:1, and Ephesus is mentioned as having a synagogue in Acts 19:1 and in Paul's Epistle
Mount Ararat agreed to cede the area to Turkey in a territorial exchange. The Iran-Turkey boundary skirts east of Lesser Ararat, the lower peak of the Ararat massif. Ararat (sometimes "Ararad") is the Greek version of the Hebrew spelling (אֲרָרָט; "'RRṬ") of the name Urartu, a kingdom that existed in the Armenian plateau in the 9th–6th centuries BC. German orientalist and Bible critic Wilhelm Gesenius speculated that the word "Ararat" came from the Sanskrit word "Arjanwartah", meaning "holy ground." Some Armenian historians, such as , link the origin of the word "Ararat" to the root of the endonym of the indigenous peoples