Atropatene

Atropatene (; ; ), also known as Atropatia or Atropatian Media (; ), was an ancient Iranian kingdom established in by the Persian satrap Atropates (). The kingdom, mostly centered around the present-day Azerbaijan region in northwestern Iran, was ruled by Atropates' descendants until the early 1st-century AD, when the Parthian Arsacid dynasty supplanted them. It was conquered by the Sasanians in 226, and turned into a province governed by a marzban ("margrave"). Atropatene was the only Iranian region to remain under Zoroastrian authority from the Achaemenids to the Arab conquest without interr

Atropates (; and Middle Persian ; ; – after 321 BC) was a Persian nobleman who served Darius III, then Alexander the Great, and eventually founded an independent kingdom and dynasty that was named after him. Diodorus (18.4) refers to him as (), while Quintus Curtius (8.3.17) erroneously names him 'Arsaces'.

1st-century BCE military campaign

thumb|300px|Ganzak located on the map of Atropatene. Ganzak is an ancient town founded in northwestern Iran. The city stood somewhere south of Lake Urmia, and it has been postulated that the Persian nobleman Atropates chose the city as his capital. The exact location, according to Minorsky, Schippmann, and Boyce, is identified as being the ruins (37.011555°N, 46.193187°E) at Leylan, Malekan County in the Miandoab plain.

king

king of Armenia

Adurbadagan (Middle Persian: Ādurbādagān/Āδarbāyagān, Parthian: Āturpātākān) was a northwestern province in the Sasanian Empire, mostly overlapping the present-day Azerbaijan region in Iran. Governed by a marzban ("margrave"), it functioned as an important frontier (and later religious) region against the neighbouring country of Armenia. It is also the root word of the modern Iranian "Azerbaijan" region as well as the country of Azerbaijan.

ancient city in Atropatene