Elias of Heliopolis

The Prosopographie der mittelbyzantinischen Zeit places Elias' birth in 758 or earlier,[1] but his vital dates are usually given as 759–779 and occasionally as 775–795.

Robert Hoyland argues for the former on the grounds that it corresponds with the reign of al-Mahdī (died 785), said in the hagiography to have been ruling at the time.

[3] Elias was born into a Syrian Christian family of Baalbek (Heliopolis) in the ecclesiastical province of Second Phoenicia in the Abbasid Caliphate.

[2] Eight years later, with the approval of his brothers, Elias returned to Damascus and opened a shop making camel saddles.

He was finally brought before the governor, Muḥammad, nephew of the reigning caliph al-Mahdī, who tried to persuade him to return to Islam through punishments and the offer of material rewards.

[3][5] When he still refused, he was beheaded on 1 February and his corpse hung outside the city gates for fourteen days before being thrown into the river Baradā.

[2][5] The single manuscript copy of Elias' hagiography (BHG 578–579) is found in the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), Coislin 303, at folios 236V–249V.

[9][10][11] Christian Sahner, however, questions the identification of this martyr with Elias of Heliopolis because Rabban Ṣalība does not associated him with Damascus or Baalbek.