What is "adiabene"

Adiabene (from the Ancient Greek , Adiabene, itself derived from , or , Old Persian: Nodshirakan, Armenian: Նոր Շիրական, Nor Shirakan) was an ancient kingdom in Assyria, with its capital at Arbela (modern-day Arbil, Iraq).

Adiabene rulers converted to Judaism from Ashurism in the 1st century. Queen Helena of Adiabene (known in Jewish sources as Heleni HaMalka) moved to Jerusalem where she built palaces for herself and her sons, Izates bar Monobaz and Monobaz II at the northern part of the city of David, south of the Temple Mount, and aided Israel in their war with Rome. According to the Talmud, both Helena and Monobaz donated large funds for the Temple of Jerusalem.

Adiabene was a metropolitan province of the Assyrian Church of the East between the 5th and 14th centuries, with more than fifteen known suffragan dioceses at different periods in its history. Although the name Hadyab normally connoted the region around Erbil and Mosul, the boundaries of the East Syrian metropolitan province went well beyond the Erbil and Mosul districts. Its known suffragan dioceses included Beth Bgash (the Hakkari region of eastern Turkey) and Adarbaigan (the Ganzak district, to the southeast of Lake Urmi), well to the east of Adiabene proper.