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
Thus Spoke Zarathustra and time", as evidence of this. More specifically, this note related to the concept of the eternal recurrence, which is, by Nietzsche's admission, the central idea of "Zarathustra"; this idea occurred to him by a "pyramidal block of stone" on the shores of Lake Silvaplana in the Upper Engadine, a high alpine region whose valley floor is at . Nietzsche planned to write the book in three parts over several years. He wrote that the ideas for "Zarathustra" first came to him while walking on two roads surrounding Rapallo, according to Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche in the introduction of Thomas Common's early