or "Arzanene proper" and the bdeashkhutʻiwn (viceroyalty or march) of Arzanene, which likely included all of the ten cantons of Arzanene listed above (according to Hewsen, probably excluding Npʻrkert) and some further territories to the south. Josef Markwart and Toumanoff include the adjacent province of Moxoene (Mokkʻ) and Corduene (or part of it) in the viceroyalty of Arzanene, although this is rejected by Hewsen. The viceroyalty of Arzanene is also called the bdeashkhutʻiwn of Aruastan in some Armenian sources (Persian: Arabistān, referring in this case to the area around Nisibis), so it is referred to as the Arabian March by some historians. History In the first half of the first millennium BCE, Arzanene may have been the location of the state of Alzi or Alše mentioned in Assyrian and Urartian cuneiform inscriptions. It was conquered by the Kingdom of Urartu (c. 9th–6th centuries BCE), then came under the control of the Medes and soon after passed to the Achaemenid Empire. Under Achaemenid rule, Arzanene was included in the Satrapy of Armenia. The Persian Royal Road passed through the province. After the conquest of the Achaemenid Empire by Alexander the Great in 330 BCE, Arzanene became a part of the Armenian kingdom ruled by the Orontid dynasty. The local princes of Arzanene claimed Assyrian royal origin, but in all likelihood they were originally a branch of the Orontid dynasty. During the reign of Tigranes the Great, under whom Armenia reached its greatest territorial extent, Arzanene became the center of his short-lived empire as the location of the new capital of Tigranocerta. It was probably under Tigranes that the bdeashkhutʻiwn of Arzanene was established to defend Armenia from an invasion from Mesopotamia. The office of the bdeashkh of Arzanene continued to exist under the Arsacid dynasty of Armenia and after the region was lost by Armenia, until at least the mid-5th century. In 298 AD, the entire bdeashkhutʻiwn of Arzanene came under the suzerainty of the Roman Empire as a result of the Peace of Nisibis. However, the 5th-century Armenian historian Faustus of Byzantium (Book 3, Chapter 8) still speaks of the bdeashkh of Arzanene as a vassal of the king of Armenia in the 330s, which Toumanoff accepts as evidence that the Romans had effectively left Arzanene under Armenian suzerainty. In the 330s, bdeashkh Bakur of Arzanene attempted to defect to the Sasanian Empire, but was killed in battle and the