Like several other early bishops of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, he is included in the traditional list of patriarchs of the Church of the East, which also considers him a saint.
In those days calamities multiplied, and the Christians lay in hiding for a long time; and when they finally emerged, calling on the name of Christ, he first killed 100,000 of them, and then a further 30,000.
Then he clapped him in irons and threw him into prison along with thirty of his priests, and tortured them with cruel torments, and deprived them of food and water for eleven months, until they all turned black from their prolonged sufferings.
He urged the clerics, religious and bishops to change their clothes and to wear secular garments, in order to evade the persecution of the impious Shapur.
They declined to resume that holy dress of yore, principally because they were cut off from the other Christian peoples, where monks demonstrated their humility by wearing the Antonian garb.
After Barbaʿshmin had secretly fulfilled his office for seven years, Shapur got wind of him and arrested him along with sixteen men, priests and believers.