In eastern Turkey there is a steep-walled canyon known as the Devil’s Valley. According to legend, anyone who drinks from the black stream that flows through it will be cursed. Another story tells of a man from an ancient civilisation who hid 70 perfect crystals there, underneath a rock shaped like a cockerel. The treasure lay undisturbed for thousands of years.

I first heard about the crystals from Muhsin Ozgur, a 65-year-old furniture-maker who lives in Erciş, a dusty city near the Devil’s Valley, on the edge of the vast Lake Van. Ozgur’s father was a treasure hunter, and spent his free time searching for riches and antiquities he believed were buried in the nearby hills. He told his son thrilling stories: the man who stole treasure from a grave only for jinns to relieve him of it; the time a sunbeam magically made a hunter’s haul disappear from his hands. 

None of those tales captivated Ozgur quite like those linked with the Devil’s Valley. He told me about one hunter who had set out in the 1960s to find the treasure. The man followed a dry riverbed into the gorge and found a shepherd who led him to the cockerel-shaped rock. Digging deep into the  earth and rubble at the base of the stone, the man eventually found a small cave. Inside it were the crystals, each over a metre tall, which glowed as the sun rose.