Atropatene

Atropatene, the Atropatian Media, was the Iranian kingdom of Azerbaijan, lasting from about 323 BC to 226 AD. When Alexander died, his satrap Atropates refused to surrender the northwestern hills and founded a kingdom that outlived every empire that claimed it: Seleucids, Parthians and Romans all claimed it, none held it long. Ruled by Atropates' house and then by Parthian Arsacids, the little realm guarded the Caspian gates and the fire temples of Adurbadagan, the only Iranian land to keep Zoroastrian rule unbroken from the Achaemenids to the Arabs, Alexander's brief passage aside. Its Old Persian name is the ancestor of the word Azerbaijan itself. Mark Antony's legions invaded in 36 BC and learned what Armenian mountains do to Roman supply lines, retreating with a third of their men. In 226 the Sasanian Ardashir, fresh from overthrowing Parthia, took Atropatene and demoted it to a frontier province under a marzban, ending five and a half centuries of the mountain kingdom.