The Patrikioses' Killing of Yusuf al-Marwazi

قتل البطارقة يوسف المروزي

between 847 and 861 CE

Armenia → Khilat (Akhlat) → Dayr al-Aqdah

In al-Baladhuri: al-Mu'tasim gave the march to al-Hasan ibn Ali (may God be pleased with him) al-Badhaghisi, known as al-Ma'muni, who neglected Armenia's patrikioses and freemen, going soft with them till they worsened in corruption against the sultan and in savaging the subjects beneath them; Ishaq ibn Isma'il ibn Shu'ayb, a mawla of Banu Umayya, mastered Jurzan, and Sahl ibn Sanbat the patrikios ambushed Haydar ibn Kawus al-Afshin's governor over Armenia, killed his scribe, and escaped by a hair; then governors came to Armenia who accepted pardon from its people and contented themselves with easy kharaj; then al-Mutawakkil gave Armenia for two years of his caliphate to Yusuf ibn Muhammad ibn Yusuf al-Marwazi — who at Khilat seized its patrikios Buqrat ibn Ashut and carried him to Samarra, estranging the patrikioses, freemen and warlords; then his agent called al-Mala' ibn Ahmad made for a monastery in Sisajan known as Dayr al-Aqdah, which Armenia's Christians had ever venerated and gifted, took everything in it and brutalised its people — the patrikioses held that enormity unbearable, wrote to one another urging breach and rupture, and sent to the Khwaythiyya — the Aztan — to ambush Yusuf, inciting them over his carrying off their patrikios Buqrat, each man of them and of the warlords sending horse and foot to back it; they ambushed him at Batrun while his men were dispersed among the villages, killed him and seized all that was in his camp.