Arsenic (Arzanene)

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Drawing of the city silhouette by John George Taylor , in Travels in Kurdistan , 1865.

Arsenic ( Armenian Արզեն , Arzen , Arzn , Ałzn , Syriac : Arzŏn or Arzŭn , Arabic : Arzan ) was an ancient and medieval city in the border region between Upper Mesopotamia and the Armenian Highlands . Researchers identify the site with the ancient Armenian capital Martyropolis (Tigranocerta), which was the capital of the Arzanene district in late antiquity and a Syrian bishopric , as well as a Sassanid border fortress in the Roman-Persian Wars . After the Muslim conquest , the city briefly became the seat of an independent emirate in the 9th century , before being destroyed in the wars between the Byzantine Empire and the Hamdanids in the 10th century. The city was deserted in the 12th century. Today only a few traces are visible.

history

The origin of the name Arzĕn (due to the unusual Armenian pronunciation) is unknown and non-Armenian. The location on the bank of the Garzan Su ( Nicephorius ) River in southeastern Turkey was first visited and identified by John George Taylor , the British Consul at the time in Diyarbakir . He published a sketch of the floor plan in his work Travels in Kurdistan .

From 1995 to 96 TA Sinclair succeeded in identifying the Arzen site with the description of Tigranocerta . It was the capital of ancient Greater Armenia from Tigranes II , instead of the Martyropolis or Kızıltepe previously identified with it .

In ancient times , Arzen was also the capital of the Arzanene district . During the time of the Kingdom of Armenia, Arzanene was ruled by a "bdeašx" (march master, march-warden). In the peace of 297, the city was ceded to the Roman Empire by the Sasanid king Narseh, along with the rest of the Arzanene district, as well as the neighboring districts of Sophene , Ingilene , Zabdicene and Corduene , but brought back under Sasanid rule in 363. The office of bdeašx apparently remained, as an incumbent named Hormizd is mentioned by Prokopios , who led a Sassanid army in 528.

The city is mentioned as the bishop's seat of the Church of the East (ܥܕܬܐ ܕܡܕܢܚܐ ʿĒḏtā d-Maḏenḥā) for the first time around 410, as a suffragan of Nisibis (Nisibin, ܢܨܝܒܝܢ). In the 5th and 6th centuries the city was a bastion of the Sasanids in the numerous Byzantine-Sasanid wars. The strategic importance lay in the mastery of the trade route from Amida (Ἄμιδα, ܐܡܝܕ) in Upper Mesopotamia across the Lake of Van to the Armenian highlands and the Armenian capitals Artaxata and Dvin . 578, according to Theophylaktos Simokates, 10,000 people from the district were forcibly taken to Cyprus by the Byzantines .

middle Ages

The city surrendered to Iyad ibn Ghanm (عياض بن غنم بن زهير الفهري, ʿIyāḍ ibn Ghanm ibn Zuhayr al-Fihrī) during the first wave of Islamic conquests. Arab geographers incorporated the city into the Jazira district and, more precisely, into the Diyar Bakr district . They often mentioned the city along with the nearby Mayyafariqin . The region was fertile and prosperous: according to Qudama ibn Ja'far (قدامة بن جعفر الكاتب البغدادي, Qudama ibn Ja'far al-Katib al-Baghdadi) the total profit of Mayyafariqin and Arzen in Abbasid times amounted to 4.1 million dirhams . Unlike the Armenian regions further north, which formed the restored Bagratid Armenia (Բագրատունյաց Հայաստան, Bagratunyats Hayastan) in the 9th century , Arzen and the other cities on the southern periphery were quickly Arabized and the population became indistinguishable from the inhabitants of Upper Mesopotamia or Syria . The tribe of the Banu Shayban, a branch of the Banu Bakr , settled in the area and dominated Diyar Bakr politically until the late 9th century.

Zurariden Emirate of Arzen :

Arzen himself came under the rule of a local Arab dynasty, the Zurarids , who were descended from the Banu Bakr. The exact origin and the relationship to the Shaybanids are unknown. The first known ancestor of the dynasty was Musa ibn Zurara in the middle of the 9th century. The Zurarids mingled with their Armenian Christian neighbors: Musa married the sister of Bagrat II. Bagratuni , while his son Abu'l-Maghra was a princess of the Arzruni . As a result, the Zurarids tended to ally with their Christian neighbors. During the Armenian revolt in the early 850s, Emir Musa joined the uprising in opposition to the Abbasid governor Yusuf ibn Muhammad ibn Yusuf al-Marwazi and then belonged to the Armenian princes who were led by the Abbasid general Bugha al-Kabir in the capital Samarra were abducted. And when Abu'l-Maghra, the half-Armenian with the Armenian wife, was threatened by his Shaybanid neighbors, he even secretly converted to Christianity and united his troops with those of his Arzruni relatives. However, around 890 he was captured by the ambitious Shaybanid ruler of Diyar Bakr, Ahmad ibn Isa al-Shaybani , who confiscated the lands of the Zurarids.

depopulation

During the Byzantine expansion under Ioannis Kourkouas (Ἰωάννης Κουρκούας) in the 930s, Arzen came under Hamdanid control. A Hamdanid general , Ali ibn Ja'far al-Daylami , was appointed governor, but he rebelled against the Emir Nasir al-Dawla in 936 . He sent his brother, Sayf al-Dawla , to subjugate the rebels and regain control of the entire Diyar Bakr. For the next few decades, Sayf al-Dawla used the city as a base for his campaigns against the medieval Armenian principalities in the north or against the Byzantines in the west. In the course of these conflicts, the Byzantines devastated Arzen around 942. The Hamdanids took over the city again, but the area remained disputed. During this time, the Kurds first appeared and settled in the area. They quickly replaced the Arabs.

The city lost its importance from the middle of the 10th century and at the turn of the 12th to the 13th century, the geographer Yaqut al-Hamawi wrote that the city was in ruins. Apart from Taylor's drawings, there isn't much left, the area is used for agriculture.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hübschmann 1904: 311.
  2. ↑ Hübschmann 1904: p. 311.
  3. ↑ Comfort 2009: p. 284
  4. ^ In: Journal of the Royal Geographical Society , Vol. 35, 1865. Frye 1960: pp. 679-680.
  5. ^ The site of Tigranocerta. In: Revue des Études Arméniennes. Vol. 25, pp. 183-254 & Vol. 26, pp. 51-118.
  6. ^ Comfort 2009: pp. 120, 271, 284.
  7. ↑ Frye 1960: pp. 679-680; J. Crow: Art. Arzen In: The Oxford Dictionary of Late Antiquity (ODLA), p. 161
  8. ↑ Marquart 1901: p. 25.
  9. ↑ Marquart 1901: p. 25; J. Crow: Art: Arzanene In: ODLA, p. 161.
  10. ↑ Marquart 1901: p. 25.
  11. ↑ Marquart 1901: p. 25.
  12. ↑ Comfort 2009: p. 284.
  13. ↑ Comfort 2009: p. 284.
  14. ↑ Comfort 2009: p. 284.
  15. ↑ Frye 1960: pp. 679-680.
  16. ↑ Frye 1960: pp. 679-680; Marquart 1901: 25; Ter-Ghewondyan 1976: p. 27.
  17. ↑ Frye 1960: pp. 679-680
  18. ↑ Ter-Ghewondyan 1976 S. 133rd
  19. ↑ Ter-Ghewondyan 1976: pp. 27-29, 32.
  20. ↑ Ter-Ghewondyan 1976: pp. 32, 42, 182.
  21. ↑ Ter-Ghewondyan 1976: pp. 55-56, 182.
  22. ↑ Ter-Ghewondyan 1976: pp. 44, 55-56.
  23. ↑ Ter-Ghewondyan 1976: p. 48.
  24. ↑ Ter-Ghewondyan 1976: pp. 29, 63.
  25. ↑ Ter-Ghewondyan 1976: pp. 82, 84.
  26. ↑ Ter-Ghewondyan 1976 S. 84th
  27. ↑ Frye 1960: pp. 679-680.
  28. ↑ Frye 1960: pp. 679-680.
  29. ↑ Ter-Ghewondyan 1976: p. 111
  30. ↑ Ter-Ghewondyan 1976 S. 133rd
  31. ↑ Frye 1960: pp. 679-680.
  32. ^ Comfort 2009: pp. 284–285.

literature

  • Anthony Martin Comfort: Roads on the frontier between Rome and Persia: Euphratesia, Osrhoene and Mesopotamia from AD 363 to 602. University of Exeter 2009 (Ph.D., hdl = 10036/68213)
  • RN Frye: Arzan. In: Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. Vol. 1 (1960), pp. 679-680. doi.org
  • H. Hübschmann: The old Armenian place names. With contributions to the historical topography of Armenia and a map. In: Indo-European Research. 1904, vol. 16: pp. 197–490 (doi = 10.1515 / 9783110242584.197, hdl = 2027 / hvd.32044011394731)
  • Joseph Marquart: Ērānšahr according to the geography of Ps. Moses Xoranacʽi. Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, Berlin 1901.
  • Oliver Nicholson (Ed.): The Oxford Dictionary of Late Antiquity (ODLA). Oxford University Press, Oxford 2018, ISBN 978-0-19-866277-8
  • Aram Ter-Ghewondyan: The Arab Emirates in Bagratid Armenia. 1965 Transl. Nina G. Garsoïan. Livraria Bertrand, Lisbon 1976. OCLC 490638192.