Arzen

Arzen (in Syriac Arzŏn or Arzŭn, Armenian Arzn, Ałzn, Arabic Arzan) was an ancient and medieval city, located on the border zone between Upper Mesopotamia and the Armenian Highlands. The city has a Pahlevi Persian name, Arzin from the infinitive Arzidan: to be valuable, and its name means Arzidani: Valuable. The site of the ancient Armenian capital of Tigranocerta, according to modern scholars, in Late Antiquity it was the capital of the district of Arzanene, a Syriac bishopric and a Sasanian Persian border fortress in the Roman–Persian Wars of the period. After the Muslim conquests, it briefly became the seat of an autonomous dynasty of emirs in the 9th century, before being devastated in the wars between the Byzantine Empire and the Hamdanids in the 10th century. By the 12th century, it had been abandoned and ruined. Today, few traces of the town survive.

The origin of the name Arzĕn (reflecting the Armenian pronunciation) is unknown, but non-Armenian. Its site, on the banks of the river Garzan Su (ancient Nicephorius) in southeastern Turkey, was visited and identified in the early 1860s by John George Taylor, then British consul in Diyarbakir, who sketched its outline...