Abda, Abdisho and Thirty-⁠eight Companions

Abda, Abdisho and Thirty-⁠eight Companions were martyrs of Persia, put to death in 376 in the forty-⁠year persecution of King Shapur II. Abdisho and Abda were successively bishops of the city of Kashkar in Mesopotamia.

Abdisho was accused by his nephew of being a spy for the Roman Empire and was arrested with the priest Abd Alaha. They were tortured on the orders of Ardashir, the governor of Adiabene, and then sent to Gundeshapur, where King Shapur had them pressed between boards until their limbs were broken. According to the traditional account, they refused food sacrificed to idols and were fed by a pious widow.

In his absence a new bishop, Abda, was appointed, and he too was accused of spying for Rome. He was arrested with twenty-⁠eight others and seven virgins, all led in chains to Gundeshapur. They refused to worship the sun and each received a hundred lashes. Two Christian brothers, Barhadbshabba and Samuel, joined them of their own accord. All but the virgins were beheaded on 15 May 376; the next day Abdisho and Abd Alaha were killed. Roman slaves from a nearby village took the bodies. The virgins were executed on 22 May.

The persecution may also have had a political side, since the king was trying to establish Mazdaism as the state religion and judged Christians to be natural allies of Rome. The historian Sozomen mentions Abdas and Abdisho among the Persian martyrs, in a work written less than a hundred years after their deaths. They are commemorated on 16 May by the Church of the East, the Roman Martyrology, the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Syriac Orthodox Church.