Abo of Tiflis

An Arab of Baghdad in Georgia

Abo was born about the year 756 at Baghdad, the new capital of the Abbasid Caliphate, of Arab and Muslim parentage, and was trained in the trade of the perfumer — the compounding of scents and unguents — in which he was skilled while still a youth. In these years the Caliphate pressed hard on the Christian kingdoms of the Caucasus: much blood was shed in Kartli and Kakheti as the Muslim power sought to break the Georgian nation by uprooting its faith. About 775 the Georgian prince Nerse, duke of Kartli, held for three years in captivity at Baghdad, came to know the young Abo there, and on his release brought him back with him to Georgia.

Conversion and baptism

In Kartli Abo was struck by the fervent Christianity of the Georgians. He set himself to learn the Georgian language, attended the divine services, and sought out priests to instruct him, until he desired with his whole heart to become a Christian. Because open conversion from Islam was a capital crime under the Caliphate, his baptism was delayed until he could receive it in safety: travelling in the north with Nerse, in the land of the Khazars (and, the accounts add, among the Christians of Abkhazia, where he rejoiced to find a whole people confessing Christ with one voice), Abo was at last baptised. From that hour he lived as a fervent Christian, fasting and praying, and would not be persuaded to hide his faith.

Confession, martyrdom, and the sign on the river

When Nerse returned to Kartli, the Abkhaz ruler, fearing the Saracens would seize Abo, urged him to remain in safety; but Abo grew restless to confess Christ openly among those who hated him, and went back to Tiflis. There he laboured about three years, preaching Christ in the city. Betrayed and once released at the intercession of the ruler Stephen (Stepanoz), he was seized again when a new emir came to Tiflis. The Christians, learning of the plot, begged him to conceal himself, but Abo only rejoiced, declaring that he was ready not merely to be tortured but to die for Christ. Brought before the judge and pressed in vain to return to the faith of his fathers, he was cast into prison and bound in chains.

On the day of his execution — in January 786 — Abo washed and anointed his face, received the Holy Gifts, and prepared for death as for a feast, bidding the faithful not to weep but to rejoice, for he was going to his Lord. Folding his arms upon his breast in the form of a cross, he bowed his head beneath the sword; the executioners swung three times to frighten him into denying Christ, but he stood unmoved until, at a sign, they beheaded him. His persecutors, to leave no relics, gathered his body, his garments, and the blood-soaked earth into a sack, dragged it outside the city, burned it by the Kura (Mtkvari) River, and cast the ashes into the water. That evening a shining star or light was seen hanging over the river by the Metekhi cliff, above the place where his remains had rested. A chapel was afterwards raised in his honour on the left bank, and Abo became the patron saint of Tbilisi.

Literary and later legacy

The Passion of Abo was composed within a few years of his death by Ioane (John) Sabanisdze, at the direction of the Catholicos Samuel of Kartli. Written in the last decade of the eighth century, it is one of the earliest and finest works of original Georgian hagiography and a precious historical witness to Kartli under Arab rule — its portrait of a convert from Islam martyred for Christ was meant, and long served, to strengthen the Georgian people in their faith under the Caliphate.