Oral History and Oral Writing in Historical Texts (Relying on Tarikh-e Beyhaghi)

"The past accounts are categorized into two parts and there is no third one; they should be heard from someone or read from a book." Beyhaghi

The Beaver Night & Beside the Oven

What a lot of mediocre soldiers and militants whom have turned into national heroes by the dexterity of the poets, minstrels, artists, and historians. What a lot of wonderful heroes who are buried under the dust of history, because they have not found any way to the mysterious world of artists and writers. Religiously speaking, poets and historians do not write the esteem and reverence of the God's devotees.

Communicative Archives, Documentary Researches

Written, documentary and oral history are three methods of historiography that each one has its own special purpose, credit, and usage; but in our country, documentary and oral historiography under the impression of a phenomenon called Islamic Revolution have created new waves in the study and compilation of history. Collection, record, and publication of documents obtained from pre-revolution police, security and political organizations and the US embassy have helped researchers in their documentary researches and completion of this kind of researches.

Human Being and His Memoirs

Although oral history is a relatively new approach in historiography, its background goes back even to the pre-civilization age and the invention of writing and many nations would obtain their historical identity by oral quotation of events. Also the first sources of the great historians such as Herodotus, Thucydides, and Plutarch have been these very oral narrations of witnesses of events.

Close Past

. A historian who knows that the memoir may not be pure, he or she should consider motivations, status, real position and the personal specifications of the interviewee, and at the same time as much as possible and necessary, force the interviewee to speak and lead him or her in his preplanned path. In other words, the interviewer should control the interview, and it is with this control that oral history is differentiated from memoir-writing.

Anatomy of Oral History

For centuries, the historical information was exclusively communicated orally. With the advent of writing, however, people came to rely almost entirely on written documents for information about the past, but the approach of oral communication was almost lost. The advent of sound recording technology has once more enabled students of the past to collect and use information communicated by speech.

Step-by-Step Guide to Oral History

We all have stories to tell, stories we have lived from the inside out. We give our experiences an order. We organize the memories of our lives into stories. Oral history listens to these stories. Oral history is the systematic collection of living people’s testimony about their own experiences. Historians have finally recognized that the everyday memories of everyday people, not just the rich and famous, have historical importance. If we do not collect and preserve those memories, those stories, then one day they will disappear forever.

The Concept and Nature of Interview in Oral History

The main topic of the article is to review the "concept of interview" in the new-born type of historicism known as "Oral History". The nature of interview as "oral connection" is determined on the basis of its goals and relations with the generality of the text's structure. Interview in oral history is generally used as "heuristic instrument". However, we in this article have tried to consider "interview as dialogue" in the oral historicism and the generality of the interviews as historic narration (empirical narration). Therefore, in the first place, oral history must be as proof of history and then a source and a basis of information (Oral Resources) for historicism.

The Most Democratic Method of Historicism

If we pay attention to the propaganda of the public media in Iran and some journals and books published by state and even non-state institutions, we found that these institutions and cultural and publication centers look at the war with a kind of Gnostic-divine approach and tendency and show somehow as if the war is basically a good and holy phenomenon. Even some regard the "Sacred Defense" term as a kind of defense and even the sanctification of war and violence. Is this really correct? Is war really sacred and good?

Oral History and Memoirs

Having become scientific and methodological, oral history has created a field which contributes to other fields of the humanities or benefits from them. It has been based on drawing up remembrances, their analysis and preparation. Memoirs are not only a source for oral history but also one for literature and art. This short article aims to provide the reader with the definition of memoirs-recording and the related terms.