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 1500 and 500 BCE. Some scholars such as Mary Boyce (who dated Zoroaster to somewhere between 1700–1000 BCE) used linguistic and socio-cultural evidence to place Zoroaster between 1500 and 1000 BCE (or 1200 and 900 BCE). The basis of this theory is primarily proposed on linguistic similarities between the Old Avestan language of the Zoroastrian Gathas and the Sanskrit of the Rigveda (c. 1700–1100 BCE), a collection of early Vedic hymns. Both texts are considered to have a common archaic Indo-Iranian origin. The Gathas portray an ancient Stone-Bronze Age bipartite society of warrior-herdsmen and priests (compared to Bronze tripartite society;