Zoroaster parallels include the evident similarities between Amesha Spenta and the archangel Gabriel, and the mention of Thamud and the Iram of the Pillars in the Quran. These may also indicate the vast influence of the Achaemenid Empire on the development of either religion. The Sabaeans, who believed in free will coincident with Zoroastrians, are also mentioned in the Quran. Like the Greeks of classical antiquity, Islamic tradition understands Zoroaster to be the founding prophet of the Magians (via Aramaic, Arabic "Majus", collective "Majusya"). The 11th-century Cordoban Ibn Hazm (Zahiri school) contends that "Kitabi" "of the Book" cannot apply in light
Zoroaster with Plato on natural philosophy. With respect to substance and content in "On Nature" only two facts are known: that it was crammed with astrological speculations, and that Necessity ("Ananké") was mentioned by name and that she was in the air. Pliny the Elder names Zoroaster as the inventor of magic ("Natural History" 30.2.3). "However, a principle of the division of labor appears to have spared Zoroaster most of the responsibility for introducing the dark arts to the Greek and Roman worlds." That "dubious honor" went to the "fabulous magus, Ostanes, to whom most of the pseudepigraphic magical literature was