Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Атрапатэна" in Belarusian language version.
In the third century B.C., Atropatene had probably extended toward the north to the Pontic regions Phasia and Colchis (Markwart, op. cit., p. 108) but normally its boundaries were limited by the basin of the Araxes.
The domains of Artaxias, at first limited to the Araxes valley, were greatly enlarged at the expense of Iberia and, above all, of Media Atropatene, which lost its Caspian seaboard and the districts of Phaunitis (Siunia ?) and Basoporeda (Vāspūrakān, east of Lake Van).
We need not take seriously Moqaddasī’s assertion (p. 375) that Azerbaijan had seventy languages, a state of affairs more correctly applicable to the Caucasus region to the north; but the basically Iranian population spoke an aberrant, dialectical form of Persian (called by Masʿūdī al-āḏarīya) as well as standard Persian, and the geographers state that the former was difficult to understand.
The next mention of Media Atropatene comes in reports that after the death of Mithridates II in 88-87 B.C., the Armenians succeeded in recovering lands which they had earlier lost to the Parthians. According to Strabo (11.14.15) and Plutarch (Lucullus 26), the Armenians occupied Atropatene at this time.
In the third century B.C., Atropatene had probably extended toward the north to the Pontic regions Phasia and Colchis (Markwart, op. cit., p. 108) but normally its boundaries were limited by the basin of the Araxes.
