According to the "Patria of Constantinople", the construction of this cistern, which lay in the twelfth region of Constantinople, occurred under Emperor Anastasius I (r. 491–518). The name came from the important church dedicated to Saint Mocius, which was located near the southwest corner of the reservoir. The cistern, which lay just outside the Wall of Constantine, which formed the city's original landward boundary, was built to supply water to the new quarters erected between the former and the 5th-century Theodosian Walls. Writing after the Ottoman conquest of 1453, the 16th-century French traveler Pierre Gilles observed that around 1540 the reservoir was empty. In the Ottoman period, as its Turkish name "Çukurbostan" ("hollow garden") betrays, the structure was used as vegetable garden, usage which remained until the end of the 20th century. As of 2014 the area is used as "Educational Park" () of the Fatih district.