the Armenian capitals of Artaxata and Dvin. In 578, according to Theophylact Simocatta, 10,000 people from the district were forcibly resettled by the Byzantines to Cyprus. Middle Ages The city surrendered to Iyad ibn Ghanm in 640, during the first wave of the Muslim conquests. 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. 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. Unlike the Armenian regions further north, which eventually formed part of a restored Armenian kingdom in the 9th century, Arzen and other towns on the southern periphery were quickly Arabized, and their population became indistinguishable from the inhabitants of Upper Mesopotamia or Syria. The Banu Shayban tribe, a branch of the Banu Bakr, settled in the wider area and dominated the Diyar Bakr politically until the late 9th century. Zurarid emirate of Arzen 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. The first attested member of the dynasty is Musa ibn Zurara in the mid-9th century. The Zurarids intermingled with their Armenian Christian neighbours: Musa married the sister of Bagrat II Bagratuni, while his son Abu'l-Maghra married an Artsruni princess. As a result, the Zurarids tended to side with their Christian neighbours during the 9th century. Indeed, during the Armenian revolt in the early 850s, the emir Musa joined the uprising due to his opposition to the Abbasid governor Yusuf ibn Muhammad ibn Yusuf al-Marwazi, and was one of the Armenian princes carried into captivity in the Abbasid capital Samarra by the Abbasid general Bugha al-Kabir. 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, but in he was taken prisoner by the ambitious Shaybanid ruler of Diyar Bakr, Ahmad ibn Isa al-Shaybani, who annexed the Zurarid domains. Later history and abandonment Faced with the Byzantine Empire's expansion under John Kourkouas in the 930s, Arzen came under Hamdanid control. A Hamdanid lieutenant, Ali ibn Ja'far al-Daylami, was appointed its governor, but rebelled against the