Moxoene


Moxoene was a province of the ancient kingdom of Armenia, today in Van province, Turkey, as well as a feudal familial name c. 400-800, also known by the name Moghk or Mox, Moxq, Moxus, Moxos, Moks, Mukus, Miks, Mikus, sometimes Mekes, as Muksî or Muskî in Kurdish, today Bahçesaray in Turkish.
The settlement was known in Roman times as Moxos, after the 8th century as Mokks or Moks, and after the 18th century as Mukus.
Moxoene may have been named after the Bronze Age Mushki people, who according to Assyrian sources, settled in the region.
It was an ancient Armenian province, which was bounded on the south by a part of Assyria called Aruastan by the Armenians. It was governed by Armenian princes. Their descendants still reigned there in the tenth century.
The principality of Moxoene, along with Corduene and Zabdicene, is considered to be a Carduchian dynasty. According to ancient Armenian sources, the Carduchian nobility were Armenian.
Before the Armenian Genocide in 1915 the district contained sixty villages, forty of which were inhabited by Armenians. Faqi Tayran, the Kurdish poet and writer, and Han Mahmud, the 19th-century Kurdish lord, were from this district.