John Malalas

John Malalas (; ; – 578) was a Byzantine chronicler from Antioch in Asia Minor.

Life Of Syrian descent, Malalas was a native speaker of Syriac who learned how to write in Greek later in his life. The name Malalas is probably derived from the Syriac word 'rhetor, orator'; it is first applied to him by John of Damascus. The alternative form Malelas is later, first appearing in Constantine VII.

Malalas was educated in Antioch, and was probably a jurist there, but moved to Constantinople at some point in Justinian I's reign (perhaps after the sack of Antioch by the Sasanian Empire in 540); all we know of his travels from his own hand are visits to Thessalonica and Paneas.

Writing

He wrote a Chronographia in 18 books, the beginning and the end of which are lost. In its present state it begins with the mythical history of Egypt and ends with the expedition to Roman Africa under the tribune Marcianus, Justinian's nephew, in 563 (his editor Thurn believing it originally to end with Justinian's death ); it is focused largely on Antioch and (in the later books) Constantinople. Except for the history of Justinian and his immediate predecessors, it possesses little historical value; The eighteenth book, dealing with Justinian's reign, is well acquainted with, and colored by, official propaganda. The writer is a supporter of Church and State, an upholder of monarchical principles. However, the theory identifying him with the patriarch John Scholasticus is almost certainly incorrect.

Malalas cites many sources, including the lost or fragmentary works of Brunichius, Charax of Pergamum, Domninus, Eustathius of Epiphania, Eutropius, Eutychianus, Nestorianus, Philostratus, Priscus, Sisyphus of Kos and Timotheus.

The work is important as the first surviving example of a chronicle written not for the learned but for the instruction of the monks and the common people,

It obtained great popularity, and was used by various writers until the ninth century; it was translated into Old Bulgarian probably in the tenth century, and parts of it were used for the Primary Chronicle. It is preserved in an abridged form in a single manuscript now at Oxford