Imam Musa al-Sadr from perspective of "Agreed Followers"

Oral history and loyalty to tune and literature of narrator

Elham Saleh
Translated by Fazel Shirzad

2016-8-21

Note: He did not like anyone dictate people. This behavior was for his athletic attitude. He cooperated with party "Devotees of Islam" martyr Navab Safavi, and for the sake of friendship with the heroes of Tehran, whenever he message them for problems related to Ayatollah Kashani, each of them gathered a lot of people.

Ayatollah Sayed Morteza Mostajabi has such a character. He wrote in his book" Agreed Followers" about his fragmented Memories, family of Sadr and Imam Musa al- Sadr. The book is set in the form of an interview and is one of the books in the form of oral history collection about Imam Musa al-Sadr that have been published by Cultural Research Institute.

Sadr's family in Iran, Iraq and Lebanon

"Agreed Followers" is devoted to oral history of Imam Musa al-Sadr, but other dispersed issues can be seen in different parts of it, such as common features of Seyed Sadr al-Din and Ayatollah Kashani, funeral of Ayatollah Sadr, got to know Imam Musa al-Sadr and Ostad Abolhassan Saba, Devotees of Islam, the nationalization of the oil industry and the state of the clergy in the era of the king Reza Khan.

Another title is about features of Sadr's family that narrator spoke about them in different parts of this book:" One feature of this family is about humble behavior (Dervish). All of them tried to forgive people.  At least in our age, we can't find such movement, that Ayatollah Sadr (father of Musa al-Sadr) has done among clergies of Shiite. What did he do? When Ayatollah Boroujerdi came to Qom, Ayatollah Sadr was one of founders of clergy in Qom; he made Ayatollah Boroujerdi as a successor for his teaching and praying. More importantly, when some of people came to see Ayatollah Sadr to pay Islamic tax, he said them: "Go and see Mr. Boroujerdi!"

Referring to have a public interest to Ayatollah Sadr, The narrator examines the relationship between Sadr and the Devotees of Islam:" Devotees of Islam had an interest to Ayatollah Sadr. Not only Devotees of Islam, but also some religious groups and political currents, or Mr. Kashani also loved him. For his behavior, he was a pattern of clergy; he would welcom all the people warmly and never rejected anyone. On the other hand, Mr. Sadr has a scientific and moral character. He spoke less about these issues, but Mr. Khansari fought against Britain along with Seyed Abol-Ghasem Kashani in Iraq…"

But, why are there other different contents in the book beside of pay attention on Imam Musa al-Sadr? This is a question that the author of the book answers it:" the book is about oral history of Imam Musa al-Sadr, but we wide the field of research due to effective and outstanding role of family of Sadr in Iran, Iraq and Lebanon."

"Agreed Followers" is a book that answered the issues of Imam Musa al-Sadr in an interview with Ayatollah Seyed Morteza Mostajabi.  Scientific status of Imam Musa Sadr is one of the issues that Ayatollah Mostajabi speaks about it:" he was in scientific courage. In fact, she was a professor. When he learned a lesson, he would be able to teach it at the moment. He was so clever. He used to enter in discussions about jurisprudence issues carefully and with courage."

In the eyes of narrator, Imam Musa al-Sadr was a perfect man:" he was a perfect man. Sometimes, he come to Isfahan, sometimes he stayed and visited there for two or three months. The first step was to see families had relatives, then visiting poor and stay-at-home people. We went to see them together and he gave patronage them.

Ayatollah Mostajabi has written about the personality of Imam Musa al-Sadr for readers socially. "Socially, sometime traders were invited to his home, sometimes the scholars, and sometimes city officials, and he spoke for them individually. All used of his understanding and knowledge, and wanted him to stay there.

The book "Agreed Followers" has some other interesting points. One example is the political position of Imam Musa Sadr to nationalize the oil industry:" we were friend. There is any doubt that he was agree to nationalize the oil industry and was hopeful to national movement. But he was not man of differences and fights. His rational horizon was to gather everyone ... Sir Mousa Sadr was a man far beyond these words."  

According narrator, Imam Musa al-Sadr was a person who political, cultural, social climate of Lebanon had no affected on his leadership, but he influenced in the climates. He established Industrial School named Sur managed by martyr Mustafa Chamran. Ayatollah Mostajabi expresses a memoir about it:" I remember when we got there; some of the Palestinian Marxist groups and opposition of Sir Musa al-Sadr were motivated by some of countries, and had shot there by RPG rocket.  Chamran draw some red lines on the wall to show blood of innocent children. Chamran was a mystic, honorable, respectable, educated, committed, and resolute and gentleman, and was devoted to Musa al-Sadr."

Contents and the typed text of documents

The book "Agreed Follower 'has been categorized: birthdays, family, and the first migration, Sadr's family, entering in the field of religion and spirituality, political campaigns and Imam Musa Sadr. But these Contents are not visible in the list of book. "Words of Publisher", "Introduction", "Interview with Ayatollah Seyed Morteza Mustajabi", "Biographies", "documentation" and "Speech of Hojjat al-Eslam Mehdi Abdul Amir Qabalan and Profile" are in the list, and it is a disadvantage of the book because of issues and contents are not mentioned in details.

Unlike most books, there is not any section for documents and images in this book, but documents and images are placed among contents of the book. In different pages of the book, when an issue is mentioned, some photographs and related documents can be seen along with it or one and two pages before or after it. But readers could more easily examine and understand the content of the documents, if the typed texts are mentioned with images and documents. 

Hamid Qazvini, author of the books, explains about the lacking in use of the typed text: "It is extremely laborious work to type documents, because they are very hard to read. If some of them to be typed and illegible parts not to be typed, the text will be incomplete. So that is why we published image of documents for motivated readers. We also supposed that many of these documents won't publish elsewhere, so we published them."

The book "Agreed Followers" has also some footnotes that offer additional details about the contents. In addition, the section "Biography" provides biography of the people, who have talked about them, for readers.

Document of oral history

Reading the book "Agreed Followers," One of the point that attract attention from the beginning and it seems a little strange, is use of a slang and informal expression in the interview:" uncle! Go and take two or three breads!"  "We were wearing suit still. We looked like a young in a so-called scoundrel cap.  When a man became old, he will be seemed in small figure. It was World War II. Stores were crowded, especially bakeries. We went in front of line to buy bread by scoundrel, childish, young and gymnastically figure. If we were a nice gentleman or a scoundrel and if we were an athlete, we should be waiting in line for them."  

Using this kind of slang words can be seem strange as long as the author does not explain it. Hamid Qazvini says about slang tune of book:" What is emphasized in the discussion of oral history is loyalty to the narrator's literature, but there is not different in tune and language of a businessman and a university professor when they are interviewing. I think the best thing that each person introduces his tone and literature. I think the best thing that introduces each person is his or her tune and literature."

He added: "What happens in an interview is a document; where an interviewee pause, laugh, or affected, perhaps will be examined after fifty years as a document of oral history."

Forth book

"Agreed followers" is fourth book has been published by Imam Musa Sadr's Cultural Institute research about oral history of Imam Sadr. Before this book, some books have been published, such as "Me and Mr. Musa" (an interview with Ayatollah Abdul Jalil Jalili Kermanshahi), "Hadith of time" (Memoirs of Seyed Hadi Khosrowshahi), "meeting in Paris" (Memoirs of Hassan Habibi).  Among these books, the author of the book "Me and Mr. Musa", "Hadith of Time" and "Agrees Followers", is Hamid Qazvini, and interviews and the book "Meeting in Paris," are also done by him but this is not mentioned in the book.

Qazvini mentioned that memoirs of Ayatollah Mostajabi are different ones, because he has a different personality and his relationship with Imam Musa Sadr is special and different. He says about it: "Although he is a supreme clergy, and although he is a Priest, but he strongly interested in the heroic environment. On the one hand, I was dealt with a supreme clergy, on another hand I was dealt with someone who has a heroic behavior and 90 years old. These three features cause to make a difficult situation for me."

One of the problems for developing the oral history is forgetting of Memoirs over time that this problem has also been in the book "Agreed Followers". Qazvini also explains about how he dealt with this problem: “Ayatollah Mostajabi mentioned pretty much that my memory is weakened. It was possible he fell into wrong. But I coordinated issues with him by using documents and other narrates and tried to remind memoirs for him in this way.”

Hamid Qazvini also has several other books that he has not spoken about them up to now.

* The book "Agreed Followers": Memoirs of Ayatollah Seyed Morteza Mostajabi by Hamid Qazvini. Pub: Tehran, Imam Musa Sadr's Cultural Research Institute, 1395 (2016), 426 p.