ricius. If we can determine the position of these three,
that of the others will follow, at least within certain limits.

Now Arzanene was certainly on the left bank of the Tigris. It adjoined
Armenia, and is reasonably identified with the modern district of
Kherzan, which lies between Lake Van and the Tigris, to the west of the
Bitlis river. All the notices of Arzanene suit this locality; and the
name "Kherzan" may be regarded as representing the ancient appellation.

Zabdicene was a little south and a little east of this position. It
was the tract about a town known as Bezabda (perhaps a corruption of
Beit-Zabda), which had been anciently called Phoenica. This town is
almost certainly represented by the modern Fynyk, on the left bank of
the Tigris, a little above Jezireh. The province whereof it was the
capital may perhaps have adjoined Arzanene, reaching as far north as the
Bitlis river.

If these two tracts are rightly placed, Cordyene must also be sought
on the left bank of the Tigris. The word is no doubt the ancient
representative of the modern Kurdistan, and means a country in
which Kurds dwelt. Now Kurds seem to have been at one time the chief
inhabitants of the Mons Masius, the modern Jebel Kara j ah Dagh and
Jebel Tur, which was thence called Oordyene, Gordyene, or the Gordisean
mountain chain. But there was another and a more important Cordyene
on the opposite side of the river. The tract to this day known as
Kurdistan, the high mountain region south and south-east of Lake Van
between Persia and Mesopotamia, was in the possession of Kurds from
before the time of Xenophon, and was known as the country of the
Carduchi, as Cardyene, and as Cordyene. This tract, which was contiguous
to Arzanene and Zabdicene, if we have rightly placed those regions,
must almost certainly have been the Cordyene of the treaty, which, if
it corresponded at all nearly in extent with the modern Kurdistan, must
have been by far the largest and most important of the five provinces.

The two remaining tracts, whatever their names, must undoubtedly have
lain on the same side of the Tigris with these three. As they are
otherwise unknown to us (for Sophene, which had long been Roman, cannot
have been one of them), it is impossible that they should have been of
much importance. No doubt they helped to round off the Roman dominion
in this quarter; but the great value of the entire cession lay in the
acquisition of the large and fruitful p