Yehud (Persian province)

Yehud or Yehud Medinta (Biblical Aramaic: יְהוּד מְדִינְתָּא, Yəhūḏ Məḏīntā, "the province of Judah"), sometimes misread as Yehud Medinata, was an autonomous province of the Achaemenid Empire. The name is originally Aramaic and was first introduced after Judah fell to the Babylonians. Located in Judea, the territory was ethnically diverse with a distinct Jewish community whose High Priest of Israel emerged as a central religious and political leader. It lasted for just over two centuries before being incorporated into the Hellenistic empires, which emerged following the Greek conquest of the Persian Empire.

Upon the Persian conquest of Babylon in 539 BCE, the Achaemenid Empire established its own Yehud province to absorb the Babylonian province of Yehud, which, in turn, had been established by the Neo-Babylonian Empire to absorb the Kingdom of Judah upon the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem in 587 BCE. Around this time, the Persian king Cyrus the Great issued what is commonly known as the Edict of Cyrus, which is described in the Hebrew Bible as a royal proclamation that ended the Babylonian captivity and initiated the return to Zion. In the new province, repatriated Jews began to revive their national identity and reconstruct the Temple in Jerusalem.

The province constituted a part of Eber-Nari and was bounded by Idumaea (now part of Achaemenid Arabia) to the south, lying along the frontier of the two districts. Spanning most of Judea—from the Shephelah in the west to the Dead Sea in the east—it was one of several Persian provinces in the Levant, together with Moab, Ammon, Gilead, Samaria, Ashdod, and Idumaea/Arabia, among others. The province's overall population is gauged as having been considerably smaller than that of the fallen Israelite kingdom.

In Jewish history, the Persian period marks the start of the Second Temple period.