[2] Its site, on the banks of the river Garzan Su (ancient Nicephorius) in southeastern Turkey,[1] was visited and identified in the early 1860s by John George Taylor, then British consul in Diyarbakir, who sketched its outline in his Travels in Kurdistan (Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, Vol.

51–118), T. A. Sinclair identified Arzen with the site of Tigranocerta, the capital of the ancient Kingdom of Armenia founded by Tigranes the Great, instead of previously current identifications with Martyropolis or Kızıltepe.

[6][7] The office of bdeašx apparently continued to be filled, as a holder named Hormizd is mentioned by Procopius in 528 leading a Sasanian army.

[3] Arab geographers included the city in the Jazira (Upper Mesopotamia), specifically in the district of Diyar Bakr, and often referred to it together with nearby Mayyafariqin.

[3][6][8] The region was fertile and wealthy: according to Qudama ibn Ja'far, the combined revenue of Mayyafariqin and Arzen in Abbasid times amounted to 4.1 million dirhams.

Arzen itself came to be ruled by a local Muslim dynasty, the Zurarids, which probably also descended from the Banu Bakr but whose exact origin, relationship to the Shaybanids, and early history are unknown.

[13] Threatened by his Shaybanid neighbours, Abu'l-Maghra, a half-Armenian married to an Armenian, even went as far as to secretly convert to Christianity, and join his forces to those of his Artsruni relatives,[14] but in c. 890 he was taken prisoner by the ambitious Shaybanid ruler of Diyar Bakr, Ahmad ibn Isa al-Shaybani, who annexed the Zurarid domains.

[17] During the next decades, Sayf al-Dawla would use the town as a base for his operations against the Armenian principalities to the north or the Byzantines to the west.