Adiabene
Substate | Defunct
116 CE to 651 CE
Adiabene is an Assyrian vassal kingdom of the Parthian empire, with its capital at Arbela (modern-day Arbil, Iraq).
Despite the overthrow of the Parthians by the Sassanids in 224 CE, the feudatory dynasties remain loyal to the Parthians, and resist Sassanid advance into Adiabene and Atropatene.
Due to this, and religious differences, Adiabene is never regarded as an integral part of Iran, even though the Sassanids control it for several centuries.After the Roman Empire gradually makes Christianity its official religion during the fourth century, the inhabitants of Adiabene, who are Assyrian Christians, side with Christian Rome rather than the Zoroastrian Sassanids.
The East Roman (Byzantine) Empire sends armies to the region during the Byzantine-Sassanid Wars, but this does nothing to change the territorial boundaries.
Adiabene remains a province of the Sassanid Empire until the Islamic conquests of Persia.
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The Parthian capitals of Seleucia and Ctesiphon had been captured by the Roman general Avidius Cassius in 165 or 166.
Most likely around the same time, Roman legions invade Media and Adiabene.
However, the Romans are forced to withdraw in 166, due to suffering heavy losses by a plague that has erupted in Seleucia.
The war soon ends afterwards, with Vologases IV having lost a vast part of northern Mesopotamia to the Romans.
Sassanid assaults in the West against Hatra, …
…Armenia and …
…Adiabene meet with less success.
Narseh's wife is to live out the remainder of the war in Daphne, a suburb of Antioch, serving to the Persians as a constant reminder of Roman victory.
Galerius advances into Media and Adiabene, winning continuous victories, most prominently near Erzurum, and …
…securing Nisibis (Nusaybin, Turkey) before October 1, 298.
Narseh sues for peace and Galerius compels the Persian monarch to accept Roman terms.
The resultant peace of Nisibis reinstates a Roman protégé in Armenia and gives the empire a part of Upper Mesopotamia that extends to five provinces northeast of the Tigris, which marks the greatest extension of the Roman Empire in the east.
The Persians also recognize the newly installed Roman puppet king of Armenia, Tiridates III; The Romans, for their part, return Narseh’s captive family and concubines.
Peace is thus assured for some decades.
By this treaty, which will last for forty years, the Sassanians withdraw completely from the disputed districts.
Shapur II, Sassanid ruler of the Persian Empire, has waged his campaign against Constantius II from 337, but it has so far been mostly unsuccessful.
Shapur had repelled Constantius’s invasion of Adiabene (Mesopotamia) in 343 but is unable to take the fortress of Singara in the siege of 344).
Conflict has raged for years between Romans and Persians in northern Mesopotamia, with neither side a clear-cut victor.
Nearly every year the Persians have attacked and pillaged Roman territory; the Mesopotamian towns are besieged, and the great fortress cities of Nisibis, which Shapur has besieged three times without success, and Amida, continue to resist.
Constantius has fought Shapur conscientiously, but his generals have been mediocre, except for Urisicinus, and he himself is clumsy.
However, Shapur is in 350 distracted by the appearance on his eastern frontier of a new enemy, the nomadic Chionites or Xionites, sometimes identified with a tribe known as Red Huns but whose origins remain controversial.