The Martyrs of Najran
Arethas, elder of the city of Najran in southern Arabia, with the great company killed with him in 523 by the Himyarite king Dhu Nuwas for refusing to deny Christ — the noblewoman Syncletica and her daughters among them — and the Ethiopian king Elesbaan, who broke the persecutor's power and ended his life a recluse.
Najran, in what is now southern Arabia, was a Christian city under the Himyarite kingdom. In 523 its king, Dhu Nuwas, besieged and took it, and demanded that its Christians renounce Christ. Arethas, the elder of the city, then an old man, refused and was killed with a great company of the townspeople — the synaxarion numbers them at 4,299. Among them was the noblewoman Syncletica, who was made to watch the killing of her daughters before her own.
Word of the massacre reached the Christian kingdom of Axum across the Red Sea, and its king Elesbaan crossed with an army, broke the power of Dhu Nuwas, and restored the church at Najran. He afterwards laid down his crown, sent it to Jerusalem, and lived out his life as a recluse in a cell.
The commemoration is one of the earliest the Church keeps of Christians killed in Arabia, and it is kept whole: the martyrs, the mother, and the king who avenged them and then renounced the kingdom.