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 the magi, Zoroaster's disciples and successors," for their opinion. While the division along the lines of Zoroaster/astrology and Ostanes/magic is an "oversimplification, the descriptions do at least indicate what the works are "not""; they were not expressions of Zoroastrian doctrine, they were not even expressions of what the Greeks and Romans ""imagined" the doctrines of Zoroastrianism to have been" [emphases in the original]. The assembled fragments do not even show noticeable commonality of outlook and teaching among the several authors who wrote under each name. Almost all Zoroastrian pseudepigrapha is now lost, and of the attested texts—with only one exception—only