query: country_of_citizenship eustathius of mtskheta
supports: Hell, in many mythological, folklore and religious traditions, is a place of torment and punishment in an afterlife. It is viewed by most Abrahamic traditions as punishment. Religions with a linear divine history often depict hells as eternal destinations. Religions with a cyclic history often depict a hell as an intermediary period between incarnations. Typically these traditions locate hell in another dimension or under the Earth's surface and often include entrances to Hell from the land of the living. Other afterlife destinations include Heaven, Purgatory, Paradise, and Limbo. Heaven, the heavens or seven heavens, is common religious, cosmological, or transcendent place where beings such as gods, angels, jinn, saints, or venerated ancestors are said to originate, be enthroned, or to live. According to the beliefs of some religions, heavenly beings can descend to earth or incarnate, and earthly beings can ascend to Heaven in the afterlife, or in exceptional cases enter Heaven alive. Zoroastrianism, or more natively Mazdayasna, is one of the world's oldest extant religions, "combining a cosmogonic dualism and eschatological monotheism in a manner unique [...] among the major religions of the world". Ascribed to the teachings of the Iranian prophet Zoroaster (or Zarathustra), it exalts a deity of wisdom, Ahura Mazda ("Wise Lord"), as its Supreme Being. Major features of Zoroastrianism, such as messianism, heaven and hell, and free will have allegedly influenced other religious systems, including Second Temple Judaism, Gnosticism, Christianity, and Islam. With possible roots dating back to the second millennium BCE, Zoroastrianism enters recorded history in the 5th-century BCE, and along with a Mithraic Median prototype and a Zurvanist Sassanid successor it served as the state religion of the pre-Islamic Iranian empires from around 600 BCE to 650 CE. Zoroastrianism was suppressed from the 7th century onwards following the Muslim conquest of Persia of 633-654. Recent estimates place the current number of Zoroastrians at around 2.6 million, with most living in India and in Iran. Besides the Zoroastrian diaspora, the older Mithraic faith Yazdânism is still practised amongst Kurds. A saint, also historically known as a hallow, is a term used for a person who is recognized as having an exceptional degree of holiness or likeness to God. Depending on the context and denomination, the term also retains its original Christian meaning, as any believer who is "in Christ" and in whom Christ dwells, whether in Heaven or on Earth. In Anglican, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Lutheran, and Oriental Orthodox doctrine, all of their faithful deceased in Heaven are considered to be saints, but some are considered worthy of greater honor or emulation; official ecclesiastical recognition, and consequently veneration, is given to some saints through the process of canonization in the Catholic Church or glorification in the Eastern Orthodox Church. Zoroaster (or , from Greek "Zroastrs" from "Zartosht"), also known as Zarathustra ("Zarauštra"), Zarathushtra Spitama or Ashu Zarathushtra, was the prophet of Ancient Iran, whose transformation of his inherited religion, Zoroastrianism, inaugurated a movement that eventually became the dominant religion in Ancient Persia. He was a native speaker of Old Avestan and lived in the eastern part of the Iranian Plateau, but his exact birthplace is uncertain. Tbilisi, commonly known by its former name Tiflis, and often mispronounced as "Tiblisi", is the capital and the largest city of Georgia, lying on the banks of the Kura River with a population of roughly 1.5 million inhabitants. Founded in the 5th century by the monarch of Georgia's ancient precursor the Kingdom of Iberia, Tbilisi has since served, with intermissions, as the capital of various Georgian kingdoms and republics. Under Russian rule, from 1801 to 1917 Tiflis was the seat of the Imperial Viceroy governing both sides of the entire Caucasus. Mtskheta-Mtianeti (Georgian: -) is a region (Mkhare) in eastern Georgia comprising the town of Mtskheta, which serves as a regional capital, together with its district and the adjoining mountainous areas.The western part is controlled by the breakaway Republic of South Ossetia since 1992 and the independence of Georgia.
  The region comprises five municipalities: Iran (, also , ; ' ), also known as Persia, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (' ), is a sovereign state in Western Asia. It is bordered to the northwest by Armenia, the "de facto" Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, and Azerbaijan; to the north by the Caspian Sea; to the northeast by Turkmenistan; to the east by Afghanistan and Pakistan; to the south by the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman; and to the west by Turkey and Iraq. Comprising a land area of , it is the second-largest country in the Middle East and the 18th-largest in the world. With 82.8 million inhabitants, Iran is the world's 17th-most-populous country. It is the only country with both a Caspian Sea and an Indian Ocean coastline. The country's central location in Eurasia and Western Asia, and its proximity to the Strait of Hormuz, make it of great geostrategic importance. Tehran is the country's capital and largest city, as well as its leading economic center. India, officially the Republic of India ("Bhrat Gaarjya"), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country (with over 1.2 billion people), and the most populous democracy in the world. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the southwest, and the Bay of Bengal on the southeast. It shares land borders with Pakistan to the west; China, Nepal, and Bhutan to the northeast; and Myanmar (Burma) and Bangladesh to the east. In the Indian Ocean, India is in the vicinity of Sri Lanka and the Maldives. India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands share a maritime border with Thailand and Indonesia. Its capital is New Delhi; other metropolises include Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad. Eustathius or Eustace of Mtskheta ( Evstat'i Mtskhet'eli ; Georgian :   ) ( died c. 550 ) is an Orthodox Christian saint , executed for his apostasy from Zoroastrianism by the Persian military authorities in Georgia . His story is related in the anonymous 6th - century Georgian hagiographic novel The Passion of Eustathius of Mtskheta . One of the earliest extant works of the Georgian literature , The Passion of Eustathius of Mtskheta (       ) was written by an anonymous author later in the 6th century , within thirty years of Eustathius ' reported death . The morphology of the work as well as some theological phrases also supports this dating , although the earliest surviving manuscript dates from c. 1000 ( Georgian National Center of Manuscripts , MSS H - 341 ) . The text is also interesting for the first Georgian formulation of the Ten Commandments , an account of the life of Jesus which recalls Tatian 's Diatessaron ( a Gospel harmony of the 2nd century ) , and traces of influence of the 2nd century Apology of Aristides . The Passion was first published by Mikhail Sabinin in 1882 . Eustathius is reported by the hagiographer to have been a Persian cobbler originally called Gvirobandak , son of a Zoroastrian priest ( magi ) , from Ganzak . Having converted to Christianity , he flees persecution to Georgia ( Iberia ) , then under the Persian military authority , in 541 . He settles at the Christian town of Mtskheta and marries a Christian woman . The local Persian cobblers '' guild denounces Eustathius to the marzban Arvand Gushnasp with seven other converts to be judged . Arvand punishes the apostates by having their noses pierced and casts them in prison under sentence of death . Six months later , Arvand releases them , however , as a farewell gesture to the local people , when recalled from Georgia by the king Khosrau I. Four years later , under the new marzban Bezhan Buzmir , Eustathius is rearrested , but reaffirms his faith before the court in a speech of some 3,000 words that makes up nearly half the Passion . Eventually , the marzban , albeit reluctant , has him beheaded in Tbilisi . The remains of Eustathius were taken to Mtskheta and buried at its principal church . The Muslim conquest of Persia, also known as the Arab conquest of Iran, led to the end of the Sasanian Empire in 651 and the eventual decline of the Zoroastrian religion in Iran. A diaspora (from Greek , "scattering, dispersion") is a scattered population whose origin lies within a smaller geographic locale. Diaspora can also refer to the movement of the population from its original homeland. Diaspora has come to refer particularly to historical mass dispersions of an involuntary nature, such as the expulsion of Jews from Judea, the fleeing of Greeks after the fall of Constantinople, the African Trans-Atlantic slave trade, the southern Chinese or Hindus of South Asia during the coolie trade, the Irish during and after the Irish Famine, the displacement of Palestinians in the 20th century, the exile and deportation of Circassians, and the emigration of Anglo-Saxon warriors and their families after the Norman Conquest of England, many of whom found employment in Constantinople and bolstered the elite bodyguard of the emperor, the Varangian Guard. Yazd, formerly also known as Yezd, is the capital of Yazd Province, Iran. The city is located southeast of Esfahan. At the 2011 census, the population was 1,074,428 in 270575 families. The Kurds () also the Kurdish people are an ethnic group in the Middle East, mostly inhabiting a contiguous area spanning adjacent parts of eastern and southeastern Turkey (Northern Kurdistan), western Iran (Eastern or Iranian Kurdistan), northern Iraq (Southern or Iraqi Kurdistan), and northern Syria (Western Kurdistan or Rojava). The Kurds are culturally and linguistically closely related to the Iranian peoples and, as a result, are often themselves classified as an Iranian people. Mtskheta is a city in Mtskheta-Mtianeti province of Georgia. One of the oldest cities of Georgia, it is located approximately north of Tbilisi at the confluence of the Aragvi river.
candidates: arab armenia bangladesh bengal china earth georgia india iran iraqi kurdistan judea myanmar nepal oman pakistan sri lanka turkey
answer: iran