In Late Antiquity, the area was part of the Roman Empire's province of Mesopotamia and an important centre of Roman Christianity, called in or . The Tur Abdin was fortified by the emperor Constantius II (), who constructed the fortress of Rhabdion to defend it during the Roman–Persian Wars. After the failure of Julian's Persian War in 363, the Tur Abdin became part of the Sasanian Empire along with the remaining territory of the five Transtigritine provinces and the nearby strongholds of Nisibis and Bezabde. The numerous monasteries of the Tur Adin eventually became part of the Church of the East organized at the Council of Seleucia-Ctesiphon in 410. They mainly took the Miaphysite position of non-Chalcedonian Christianity after the Council of Chalcedon of 451. After a period of persecution by the Chalcedonian state church of the Roman Empire and during the Byzantine–Sasanian War of 602–628, the monasteries of the Tur Abdin enjoyed a particular prosperity under Arab rule in the latter 7th century.