Dioceses of the Church of the East to 1318 to represent them. None of these four dioceses is mentioned again, and it is not clear when they lapsed. By the end of the 5th century there were at least three East Syriac dioceses in the Sassanian province of Media in western Iran. Canon XXI of the synod of Isaac in 410 foreshadowed the extension of the metropolitan principle to the bishops of Beth Madaye and other relatively remote regions. Hamadan (ancient Ecbatana) was the chief city of Media, and the Syriac name Beth Madaye (Media) was regularly used to refer to the East Syriac diocese of Hamadan as well
Ecbatana drachm, tetradrachm, and assorted bronze denominations. The wealth and importance of the city in the Persian empire is attributed to its location on a crucial crossroads that made it a staging post on the main East-West highway. In 330 BC, Ecbatana was the site of the murder of the Macedonian general Parmenion by order of Alexander the Great. The Tell Hagmatana, also called Tepe Hegmataneh (thought to correspond to the ancient citadel of Ecbatana) has a circumference of 1.4 kilometres with an area of about 40 hectares, which corresponds to a report from Polybius, although the ancient Greek and Roman