Great Farewell and Its Historiographical Significance

Hamid Qazvini
Translated by: Fazel Shirzad

2020-6-16

The subjects of oral history are extracted from the heart of events that are available in the context of people's lives. For this reason, history is considered to be a collection of cultural, natural, social, economic, and political events that took place in the past, time, and place in connection with human life. Despite this situation, many events are not of much interest to historians and documentarians at the time they take place, and they are considered normally, but over time and as emotions died down., layers of events emerge that demonstrate their historical significance.

Iranian contemporary history is full of such events that are historically important in many ways and can provide a clear understanding of Iranian society at a particular time. One of these events is the funeral of Imam Khomeini on June 5, 1989; A ceremony with a population of over 10 million is the largest funeral in the world.

This becomes important when we know that the popularity and spiritual influence of countries’ leaders and rulers will decrease greatly after a few years, but the funeral of Imam Khomeini not only proved the public support for the Islamic Republic and its leaders, but also it play a major role in maintaining national security and internal consistency.

Another important point about the ceremony was the spontaneous presence of the people and the disruption of many previous programs due to crowds and great grief of the peoples.

Obviously, some topics can be part of the research requirements in this project, such as Farewell ceremony with Imam in Tehran Mosalla[1], departure of people from other cities to Tehran, offering prayer on his body, providing security for the ceremony, accompanying people and transferring Imam's body to Behesht Zahra, giving food to people, rescuing the injured, obstacles to burial, and the delay in the burial program, the reflection of ceremony in the political circles of other countries, its effect on political and cultural atmosphere of Iran, the activities of the media during the ceremony, its effect on diplomatic relationships.

Also, due to the presence of millions of people and the participation of related institutions, the number of narrators and memory holders is high, which is expected to have a great variety of information and historical data, and, accordingly, to have a major role in recognizing the event and understanding socially, cultural and political dimensions in terms of quantity and quality, and familiarity with people's view toward Imam Khomeini and system.

Considering what has been said, it seems that the various institutes of historiography and oral history activists, entering this subject, can record parts of this great farewell.