Handler operations are altogether broken with Aria in maria-5.3-handler. They assert as follows:

mysqld: ha_maria.cc:2783: virtual THR_LOCK_DATA** ha_maria::store_lock(THD*, THR_LOCK_DATA**, thr_lock_type): Assertion `lock_type != TL_UNLOCK && (lock_type == TL_IGNORE || file->lock.type == TL_UNLOCK)' failed.

backtrace:

#8 0x006b0d98 in __assert_fail () from /lib/libc.so.6
#9 0x0854410d in ha_maria::store_lock (this=0xae63e050, thd=0xacaca70, to=0xae63d518, lock_type=TL_READ) at ha_maria.cc:2783
#10 0x082810eb in get_lock_data (thd=0xacaca70, table_ptr=0xae63d438, count=1, flags=2, write_lock_used=0xae9e07a8) at lock.cc:919
#11 0x081af9f4 in mysql_ha_open (thd=0xacaca70, tables=0xae62da80, reopen=0x0) at sql_handler.cc:370
#12 0x082a0c63 in mysql_execute_command (thd=0xacaca70) at sql_parse.cc:4046
#13 0x082a68da in mysql_parse (thd=0xacaca70, rawbuf=0xae62d9f0 "HANDLER t1 OPEN", length=15, found_semicolon=0xae9e1228) at sql_parse.cc:6078
#14 0x08298840 in dispatch_command (command=COM_QUERY, thd=0xacaca70, packet=0xacc4aa9 "HANDLER t1 OPEN", packet_length=15) at sql_parse.cc:1211
#15 0x08297caa in do_command (thd=0xacaca70) at sql_parse.cc:904
#16 0x08294d86 in handle_one_connection (arg=0xacaca70) at sql_connect.cc:1154
#17 0x00821919 in start_thread () from /lib/libpthread.so.0
#18 0x0076acce in clone () from /lib/libc.so.6

test case:

CREATE TABLE t1 ( f1 integer ) engine=aria;
HANDLER t1 OPEN;
HANDLER t1 CLOSE;
HANDLER t1 OPEN;

Furthermore, there seem to be no tests for Aria + HANDLER in the test suite. There are handler_myisam and handler_innodb tests only.