prevent some guests from harming Elias and he told Elias that he would not pay him. Elias' brother urged him to leave Damascus until rumours died down and it became safe to return. The whole family moved back to Baalbek. Eight years later, with the approval of his brothers, Elias returned to Damascus and opened a shop making camel saddles. He was twenty years old. His former employer, now a competitor, invited him to return to his workshop but Elias refused, whereupon the Syrian apostate urged his boss, the Arab, to report Elias' conversion and apostasy on the night of the party. Elias was brought before the judge al-Layth who gave him an opportunity to return to Islam. Refusing, he was tortured and put in chains. In prison, he was comforted by visions. 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. 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. Some relics (including limbs) were recovered by the Christians of Baalbek and others reported receiving visions of him after his death. Hagiography 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. It dates to the tenth or eleventh century and was probably created in a monastery in the Holy Land. The text itself, which is anonymous, appears to have been written not long after the events it describes, given its attention to detail. The author claims to have written two other hagiographies of martyrs to Islam, but he did not know Elias personally. Besides his own biography, Elias is known from the Palestinian Georgian Calendar and the Martyrology of Rabban Ṣalība. According to the former, his feast day was 4 February. According to the latter, his feast was celebrated in Bā Qisyān (Beth Qūsyānā) near Ḥaḥ in the region of Ṭur ʿAbdin on 1 February. Christian Sahner, however, questions the identification of this martyr with Elias of Heliopolis because Rabban Ṣalība does not associated him with Damascus or Baalbek. Notes Bibliography External links Elias of Heliopolis (759–779) at Dumbarton Oaks Hagiography Database, with a link to the Greek text of the hagiography. 759 births