Zoroaster Zoroaster Zoroaster (, ; "Zōroastrēs"), (Persian: زرتشت pronounced as Zartusht) also known as Zarathustra (, ; "Zaraθuštra"), Zarathushtra Spitama, or Ashu Zarathushtra, was an ancient Persian prophet, spiritual leader and ethical philosopher who taught a spiritual philosophy of self-realization and realization of the Divine. His teachings challenged the existing traditions of the Indo-Iranian religion and later developed into the religion of Mazdayasna or Zoroastrianism. He inaugurated a movement that eventually became the dominant religion in Ancient Persia. He was a native speaker of Old Avestan and lived in the eastern part of the Iranian Plateau, but his exact birthplace is
Zoroaster name derive from the Middle Iranian variants of "Zarϑošt", which, in turn, all reflect Avestan's fricative "-ϑ-". In Middle Persian, the name is 𐭦𐭫𐭲𐭥𐭱𐭲 "Zardu(x)št", in Parthian "Zarhušt", in Manichaean Middle Persian "Zrdrwšt", in Early New Persian "Zardušt", and in modern (New Persian), the name is زرتشت "Zartosht". There is no consensus on the dating of Zoroaster, the Avesta gives no direct information about it, while historical sources are conflicting. Some scholars base their date reconstruction on the Proto-Indo-Iranian language and Proto-Indo-Iranian religion, and thus it is considered to have been some place in northeastern Iran and some time between