History of the Jews in Iran lost tribes were expelled to the land of the Medes in modern-day Iran. The book of Tobit, which is part of the Apocrypha suggests that there were people from the tribe of Naphtali living in Rhages (Rey, Iran) and Ecbatana (Hamedan) at the time of the Assyrians (Book of Tobit 6:12). Three times during the 6th century BC, the Jews (Hebrews) of the ancient Kingdom of Judah were exiled to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar. These three separate occasions are mentioned in Jeremiah (52:28-30). The first exile was in the time of Jehoiachin in 597 BC, when the Temple of Jerusalem was
Ecbatana and Pasargadae and that one of the last acts of his life was to visit the city. The citadel of Ecbatana is also mentioned in the Bible in Ezra 6:2, in the time of Darius I, as part of the national archives. Although historians and archaeologists now believe that "the identification of Ecbatana with Hamadān is secure," earlier visitors to the site were unable to find significant remains of the Median and Achaemenid periods, which led them to suggest other sites as the location of Ecbatana. Assyrian sources never mention Hagmatana/Ecbatana. Some scholars believed the problem can be resolved by