This paper argues that when the Ibadiyya began to emerge as a distinct Islamic sectarian group in the early 8th century CE, some of the processes by which they defined themselves over and against other sectarian groups mirrored similar processes by which Eastern Christians had been imagining group identity in terms of lineage to sacred persons, especially martyrs and ascetics. Coalescing from the "quietist" Kharijites of Basra, and against the more activist Azariqa and Najdat, the emergent Ibadiyya appropriated a body of literature devoted to the acts of the early Basran and Kufan shurat ("exchangers," literally those who "exchanged" this world for the next, or martyrs) - a literature that depicted Kharijite heroes engaging in the same kinds of asceticism, miracle working and martyrdom often found in Syriac narratives of Christian saints. Concurrent with the re-working of this material in an Ibadi idiom, nascent Ibadis simultaneously linked themselves through "imagined" lineages to the heroic figures that their literature described. This paper will focus on the story of Abu Bilal Mirdas b. Udayya, the doyen of the early quietist Kharijites, as he appears in Ibadi sources, highlighting narrative convergences with accounts of the Eastern Christian saints. Abu Bilal remains a particularly compelling example as his story is widely preserved in Ibadi as well as non-Ibadi sources, and he was claimed as a founder or hero by other Kharijite groups (and even by some Shi'a). Abu Bilal's story in Ibadi literature thus illustrates the particular ways that Ibadis used such narratives. The paper will also briefly examine claims of lineal derivation from Abu Bilal and other Ibadi shurat, such as Tawwaf, Qurayb al-Azdi and Zuhhaf al-Ta`i, that are preserved in later Ibadi texts. By examining the Ibadi martyrdom narratives such as Abu Bilal's, and the "sacred pedigrees" attached to them, the paper will comment on the construction of sect identity in late antique/early Islamic contexts.