Minhiriath ('Between Rivers') is located in Eriador, a name for all the lands between the Misty Mountains and the Ered Luin. Minhiriath has no clear border in the north, but in the west, south and east it is bounded by water: the Great Sea or Belegaer, the river Brandywine and the river Greyflood. Minhiriath was nominally part of the Kingdom of Arnor in the early Third Age, and later it was seen as part of the kingdom of Cardolan. In the late Third Age, it was an empty land, and part of no kingdom at all. The area was once very forested, but by the time of the War of the Ring these woods were all gone, except for the still forested cape Eryn Vorn.
The inhabitants of Minhiriath were related to the ancestors of the Atani the Númenoreans were descended from, but because they spoke an unintelligible language they were not classed as Middle Men. When the large deforesting of their land began under the Númenorean Ship Kings they became openly hostile, and were persecuted. By the late Third Age the Minhiriathrim were nearly all gone, and only small populations survived in Eryn Vorn, and across the River Gwathló in Dunland.