Holy Martyr ’Abu al-Tiflîsi

Saint ’Abu al-Tiflîsi

Today in the Holy Orthodox Church we commemorate a brave and loyal Iraqi convert to Orthodox Christianity, who was beheaded for his faith by the third Sunnî Caliphate, the Abbasids, in the late eighth century. The eighth of January is the feast of Saint ’Abu al-Tiflîsi, a young citizen of Baghdad who served in the retinue of Nerse, eristavi of Georgia. It seems particularly fitting for Orthodoxy to commemorate an innocent and peaceful Baghdadi martyr today, the week after the bombing of the Baghdad Airport, and that we ask his intercessions with Christ for an end to war, for peace in his homeland and in the region.

Saint ’Abu was born in Baghdad in 758. His parents were Arabs of noble lineages and ample means, and they raised him as a Muslim. ’Abu was given an excellent education in the liberal arts and in the sciences: he gained a particularly strong practical knowledge of chemistry. This last stood him in good stead when he entered trade as a perfumer – in which profession he was said to excel, having a keen nose for fragrances, a steady hand and a sure eye for measurement. He was also an ‘excellent connoisseur of books’, well-versed in the Qur’ân and in the Hadîth. When he was seventeen or eighteen years of age, he entered the service of the aforementioned Nerse: recently released by the new Caliph al-Mahdî from his three years’ imprisonment for having offended the old one, al-Mansûr. ’Abu travelled with Nerse to his province of Kartli, now a constituent part of the nation of Georgia, and lived with him as part of his ducal retinue.

Upon reaching Tbilisi, ’Abu was (quite understandably) enchanted by the language and customs of the local population, the Kartleli. Being naturally intelligent and studious, he picked up the Georgian language for himself quite quickly. He began reading books in Georgian script, particularly the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures of the Orthodox Church. Being polite and courteous he befriended and discoursed with the learned elder citizens of Tbilisi. Those of a theological turn of mind debated with the Muslim ’Abu, and through these debates he began to respect the Christian beliefs. He was drawn by curiosity to the Divine Liturgy which the Georgians celebrated each Sunday. Soon he began fasting and praying in secret, conversion to Christianity being outlawed under penalty of death by the Abbasids.

The political winds in the Abbasid court again shifted against Nerse, who was forced to flee into the lands of the Alans in 779, taking ’Abu and 300 other men with him. From there he made his way into the Khazar Khanate, where being outside the reach of Abbasid law, ’Abu received baptism from an Orthodox priest and devoted himself all the more to prayer and fasting. The eristavi eventually moved into the Christian kingdom of Lâzestân in the Western Caucasus. ’Abu prayed and sang from the Psalter without cease for the entire length of that journey.

When they reached Lâzestân, the king and the priests and bishops of that country received the recent convert ’Abu with not only hospitality but joy. He was present in the chief city of Lâzestân on the seventeenth of January, which was the feast day of Abba Anthony, the father of Ægyptian monasticism. Hearing the Life of this saint, Saint ’Abu was inspired to imitate his holiness of life, and he undertook an ascetic discipline as an urban anchorite. For three months he not only fasted and kept vigil to mortify the flesh, but spoke no word to any other human creature, giving voice only to prayers to the Lord of all. Only on the Lord’s Pascha of that year did he speak his first words to men, greeting them in the name of the risen Christ.

The Caliph who succeeded al-Mahdî, al-Hâdî, appointed a new eristavi to rule Kartli, Stephen III – the son of Nerse’s sister. Nerse was happy that his kin had not been entirely removed from power thanks to the court intrigues, and being homesick was eager to return to Georgia. He set off into Georgia again with his retinue. But as ’Abu was leaving, the king of Lâzestân held him back. He warned the saint that if he returned to the Caliphate, his countrymen would not forgive his apostasy, and urge him to recant his faith in Christ. He would be safer if he stayed behind in Lâzestân. But ’Abu replied:

Now that Christ has shown His mercy towards me and released me from the darkness of my original ignorance and made me worthy of being baptised in Him, nothing can make me deny His name. Even if they offer me vast sums of gold and silver or interrogate me with tortures and flogging, they cannot take away from me the love of my Saviour. So do not detain me, O faithful servant of God! For what merit is there in my staying here, where no danger exists nor any chance of dying for Christ? I pray you now to let me go to reveal my Christian faith to those that hate Christ, just as I have heard that it was declared by Christ in the Holy Gospel: No one lights a candle and puts it under a bushel, but they set it on a candle-stick, so that it may give light to all. Thus let your light shine before men. So why should I hide this radiant truth with which Christ has illumined me? Nothing will make me hide from the risk of death, for I have learnt from the holy Apostle that the faint-hearted cannot inherit the kingdom of God. Therefore I am not afraid of death, since I look for the kingdom of Christ.

The king of Lâzestân was impressed by ’Abu’s arguments and by the sincerity of his faith, and gave him his blessing to leave. ’Abu accompanied Nerse back into Tbilisi; and this time he made no effort to hide his Christian faith. Those of the Muslims who remembered him from his first time in Tbilisi were dismayed. Some reviled him; some threatened him; some pestered him; some others still tried to cajole him. But he was immune to all these efforts. He was resolute in his love for Christ, and in his singleness of mind made no effort to hide it. For three years he came by no harm for his faith.

However, in late 785, ’Abu was denounced to the Muslim magistrate of Tbilisi, named Âmîr, as an apostate. He was cast into prison. Thanks to King Stephen’s interventions he was released, but a mob threatened and ’Abu was thrown back into prison on the eve of the Christmas feast to placate them. The mob demanded that ’Abu reconvert or be put to death; some of Saint ’Abu’s Christian well-wishers pleaded with him before his second arrest to flee Tbilisi and save himself, but he would not do so. Thus he was arrested and cast into prison. The magistrate offered him gold and silver to recant, but he would not. He also appealed to his family honour, and when that didn’t work either, threatened him with various tortures. But the martyr ’Abu suffered all this gladly, even as he languished in prison.

On the feast of Theophany ’Abu knew that he was going to be put to death. He washed his face with water and partook of the Divine Gifts in the chapel, and then was led out to the execution ground in chains. When the magistrate Âmîr saw ’Abu making the sign of the Cross on his way through the gate, he became astonished and told ’Abu to give up his delusions, as he called them. ’Abu answered that he had indeed given up all delusions, and had embraced Christ. The magistrate told ’Abu that he had just signed his own death sentence, but the saint replied cheerfully that his mind was already with Christ. Âmîr ordered the saint to be beheaded, and they led him away. Twice the executioner struck his neck falsely with the flat of his sword, thinking to cow him before the final blow, but he did not move or flinch. He merely crossed his arms behind his back and offered up his spirit. The third blow beheaded Saint ’Abu in one stroke. This occurred on Theophany of 786.

After the martyr’s victorious death and ascent, his enemies among the people of Tbilisi demanded the body from the magistrate, so that they might cremate it and prevent his relics from being venerated. However, his relics survived even the pyre that the Sunnîs had built for him, and so they sewed up Saint ’Abu’s body inside a sheepskin and threw it into the Mtkvari River. However, a light from heaven shone over both the place where his body had been burnt, and over the spot where he had been cast into the river. Even the earth from below his pyre had healing qualities when it was imbibed. Eventually a shrine to Saint ’Abu was built on the riverside where his body had entered the water – this is the Church of Saint ’Abu on the left bank of the Mtkvari, by the Metekhi Cliff in Tbilisi.

In this age of tensions between an amoral post-Christian occupying empire and the long-suffering land of Iraq, not to mention with the greater Iran where Georgia exists on the periphery, the prayers of this mediæval Iraqi-Georgian martyr Saint ’Abu are fervently to be desired and asked. We must pray for the Christians of the region, of which Saint ’Abu was one. And we must pray for their neighbours and even their enemies. Above all, we must pray for a lasting and just peace. May Christ our God grant it! Holy martyr ’Abu the perfumer, fearless and bold athlete of the spirit, pray unto Christ our God that our souls may be saved!

Church of St Abo, Tbilisi, Georgia