One might expect to find some mosques of considerable age in a city which flourished under its Mohammedan masters. One must, however, recollect that the Ottoman Turks are Sunnis and the Persians Shiahs; what the one may erect the other loves to destroy. We are expressly told that when Shah Safi took the place in A.D. 1635 all the mosques built by the Turks were razed to the ground. [120] About the same time the position of the town, or perhaps only of the fortress, underwent a change, being removed some eight hundred paces to its present site on the rocky cliffs at the foot of which the Zanga flows. [121] The Persians do not appear to have enriched it at that period with any remarkable buildings; and it was recovered by the Turks in 1724. [122] Some ten years later it again fell into the hands of the Persians as one of the conquests of Nadir Shah. The principal mosque is said to date from the reign of this monarch. The curious old tower which was seen by Chardin as well as by Tournefort, and of which the lineaments have been handed down to us by the former of these travellers, has long since disappeared. Still the buildings which at present exist are well worth a visit; and I propose to invite my reader to accompany me in a leisurely ramble through the alleys of Erivan. The more populous quarters are divided into a western and an eastern half, at first by the broad, metalled road which comes from Tiflis, and, further south, by the central park. Speaking generally, the eastern half is inhabited by the Tartars and the western by the Armenians. In the one you will discover the mosques, in the other the churches. But the churches are either small and quite insignificant stone structures, or have been restored beyond recognition in comparatively recent and tasteless times. I counted no less than six, including the Russian church at the southern extremity of the town. Of these the oldest foundation would appear to be that of Surb Katholike, which stands in a pleasant walled garden, adjoining the great road, in the upper or northern quarter. An ancient elm dwarfs the humble oblong edifice, which is entered from a portal on the south side, added in 1861. The interior, which is very low, is disposed in a nave and aisles, an apse and two side apses or chapels. Chardin attributes a church of this name to the latest kings of Armenia, and the priests assured me that it was indeed the earliest in date at Erivan. It was here that in Persian times the katholikos would officiate, while residing in the provincial capital.