Persian hagiography This material formed the basis for the surviving hagiographical material of Zarathustra, which is found in Middle Persian or Pahlavi texts including the "Dēnkard" and the "Wizidagiha", and in New Persian texts including the "Zaratosht-nama" and the "Shahnameh". Using and developing the historiographical methods of the "muḥaddithūn" (scholars of the sayings and history of the Prophet), Persian scholars drew on oral tradition and their own observations to write about holy figures. However, many hagiographies also drew on earlier written sources, often adapting those sources to reflect the writers' own view of sainthood. For example, in the twelfth century CE, Muḥammad
Zoroaster "Asteroskopita" (or "Apotelesmatika"), and which ran to five volumes (i.e. papyrus rolls). The title and fragments suggest that it was an astrological handbook, "albeit a very varied one, for the making of predictions." A third text attributed to Zoroaster is "On Virtue of Stones" ("Peri lithon timion"), of which nothing is known other than its extent (one volume) and that pseudo-Zoroaster "sang" it (from which Cumont and Bidez conclude that it was in verse). Numerous other fragments preserved in the works of other authors are attributed to "Zoroaster," but the titles of those books are not mentioned. These pseudepigraphic texts