Year of manufacture: 1919
Author: А.В. Jackson
Genre: monograph, ancient history
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Format: PDF
Number of Pages: 343
English language

Biographical information about Zarathustra is unreliable and are considered according to the Zoroastrian tradition. Born probably in the family of horsemen in Rades, now a suburb of Tehran Ray (Rayy) and lived in eastern Iran tentatively between the VI and the first half of the 5th century BC. e. (possibly in 628-551 BC).
Some medieval Muslim historians (Biruni, Balazuri, Qazvini, Jagut al-Hamavi, etc.), citing late Zoroastrian sources believe that Zoroaster was born in Iranian Azerbaijan.
Ghats ("Songs", part of the Avesta) depict Zarathustra as a historical personality endowed with all human passions. In these sermons-songs he loudly beats his opponents, supporters of the old Aryan religion, who deified the forces of nature, calling them by name; opposes bloody sacrifices and the orgiastic cult of haoma. In his sermon Zarathustra separated good and evil as two originally existing in the world of nature, having nothing in common with each other. He called to follow good and reject evil. Only strangers (Greek) and their later (late-Avestan and Pahlavi) sources enveloped this living person with a halo of legends, partly likening it to their ancient sages or giving him and his offspring supernatural eschatological attributes and tasks.

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