Her principal seat was in Ashtishat (Taron), located to the North from Mush, where her chamber was dedicated to the name of Vahagn, the personification of a sun-god, her lover or husband according to popular tales, and had been named "Vahagn's bedroom".
When a Byzantine army led by the Byzantine emperor John I Tzimiskes entered Taron in 973, purportedly to avenge the death of his Domestic killed at the hands of the Arabs in Mosul, Ashot mobilized an 80,000 man army to meet and force its withdrawal.
The movement quickly spread to Shirak, Turuberan and the Armenian regions of Taron, Hark and Mananali that were subject to Byzantium, after acquiring the nature of people's liberation struggle against the Byzantine expansion to their overall ideology.