Mouchesias 1

Prosopography of the Byzantine Empire
SexM
FloruitL VIII
Dates780 (taq) / 780 (tpq)
PmbZ No.2542
LocationsDamascus;
Emesa (Syria);
Jerusalem;
Palaestina (officeplace);
Syria (officeplace)
Textual SourcesAnastasius Bibliothecarius, Chronographia Tripartita (Latin translation of the Chronographia of Theophanes), ed. C. de Boor, Theophanes, Chronographia II (Leipzig, 1885), pp. 31-346 (chronicle);
Theophanes Confessor, Chronographia, ed. C. de Boor, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1883-85, repr. Hildesheim/NewYork, 1980); tr. and comm. C. Mango and R. Scott, The Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor, Oxford 1997 (chronicle)

One MS of Theophanes Confessor calls Mouchesias 1 "Machesian"; Anastasius Bibliothecarius calls him "Mucthesian" or "Muchthesian". Known as "The Zealot" (Μουχεσίαν, Ζηλωτὴν λεγόμενον), he was sent by the caliph al-Mahdi 1 in 780 as his agent into Syria and Palestine with authority to harass and persecute Christians and to rob the churches; his progress took him from Jerusalem to Emesa and Damascus: Theoph. AM 6272. See Mango and Scott, Theophanes, p. 625, n. 1 citing P. Peeters, Anal. Boll. 58 (1940), 104-109 for the identification of Mouchesias 1 with Hasan b. Qahtaba (Hasan 1).

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