Hmm, yeah writing tests using ARQ should be fairly easy. Perhaps you can have a look at the smoke tests in the AS testsuite, where you then just execute operations using the controller client... Here a simple example:
https://github.com/jbossas/jboss-as/blob/master/testsuite/smoke/src/test/java/org/jboss/as/test/embedded/mgmt/BasicOperationsUnitTestCase.java