MALAKAND PASS, a mountain pass in the North-West Province of India, connecting the British district of Peshawar with the Swat Valley. It is now a military post and the headquarters of a political agency. It came into prominence for the first time in 1895 during the Chitral campaign, when 7000 Pathans held it against Sir Robert Low's advance, but were easily routed. After the campaign was over a fortified camp was formed on the Malakand to guard the road to Chitral. During the frontier risings of 1897 the Swatis made a determined attack on the Malakand, where 700 were killed, and on the adjacent post of Chakdara, where 2000 were killed. This was the origin of the Malakand Expedition of the same year. (See SWAT.) MALALAS (or MALELAS) (Syriac for "orator"), JOHN (c. 491-578), Byzantine chronicler, was born at Antioch. He wrote a [Greek: 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 Africa under Marcianus, the nephew of Justinian. Except for the history of Justinian and his immediate predecessors, it possesses little historical value; it is written without any idea of proportion and contains astonishing blunders. The writer is a supporter of Church and State, an upholder of monarchical principles. The work is rather a chronicle written round Antioch, which he regarded as the centre of the world, and (in the later books) round Constantinople. It is, however, important as the first specimen of a chronicle written not for the learned but for the instruction of the monks and the common people, in the language of the vulgar, with an admixture of Latin and Oriental words. It obtained great popularity, and was conscientiously exploited by various writers until the 11th century, being translated even into the Slavonic languages. It is preserved in an abridged form in a single MS. now at Oxford. For the authorities consulted by Malalas, the influence of his work on Slavonic and Oriental literature, the state of the text, the original form and extent of the work, the date of its composition, the relation of the concluding part to the whole, and the literature of the subject, see C. Krumbacher's _Geschichte der byzantinischen Litteratur_ (1897). See also the _editio princeps_, by E. Chilmead (Oxford, 1691), containing an essay by Humphrey Hody and Bentley's well-known letter to Mill; other editions in the Bonn _Corpus scriptorum hist. byz._, by L. Dindorf (1831), and in J. P. Migne _Patrologia graeca_, xcvii.