Sometime after 809, probably around 811, Qenneshre was sacked and burned by renegade Arabs, probably under the leadership of Naṣr ibn Shabath al-ʿUqaylī. Around 820, Patriarch Dionysios of Tel Maḥre, a former monk of Qenneshre, received permission to rebuild the monastery from ʿUthmān, son of Thumāma ibn al-Walīd, who had succeeded his father as the effectively autonomous local leader in the midst of the civil war that followed the death of the Caliph Hārūn al-Rashīd in 809. Qenneshre never regained its previous stature.