The Oldest Type of History

What is Oral History?
"History is a complicated knowledge that has to pass uneven and indirect routes in order to achieve a respective truth and we know how differently it has been found out through centuries. In the other words, each generation has carried a piece of stone to create this glorious temple but yet the Clio Building (Muse of history and epic poetry) is unfinished." (1)
History has been understood through various ways up to now, through the paintings left on the caves' walls, tools left from the early humans, studying the inscriptions, observing the monuments, deliberating the statues, coins and seals, reading letters, manuscripts, travelogues and memoirs and …. Oral history is also another way to understand the history. "Oral history is a field of study and a method of gathering, preserving and interpreting the voices and memoirs of people, communities, and participants in past events. Oral history is both the oldest type of historical inquiry, predating the written word, and one of the most modern, initiated with tape recorders in the 1940s and now using 21st-century digital technologies." (2)
Narrative history is neither so stranger with Iranian and Islamic culture that we consider it totally imported nor so familiar that we consider it to have a domestic origin. The stories narrated orally, reading epopee or narrating epopee and lots of traditions (Hadith) that start with "His holiness said" which represent that our history is narrative. But Oral history is a different topic. Oral history is based on face to face interviews with history makers, historian's interview with history character about his particular experiences. Benefiting the Oral narrations as a historic source is an everlasting affair in a nation's historiography, however, in Oral history issue, the historian himself tries to produce the historic resources.

In oral history the researcher brings up his questions carefully to attain accurate responses and tries to revive the character's memoirs about the events he has witnessed. People's memoirs are a kind of treasure that can be compared with written documents archive and interviewer's art appears in precise questions that can obtain comprehensive information after listening to the characters personal experiences again and leave new data for coming generations. While interview, the historic events are scanned from different angles and the contents exchanged aren't found in any other resources and undoubtedly such information is very new and valuable. The ideal oral information is data that isn't found in other written or unwritten resources. In the other words when the written document is not available for researcher, referring to other resources is rehash. Oral history just finds relevant when information resources are unable from reporting any news. In order to collect oral information it is necessary to have a careful planning, so first the information shouldn't be duplicate then it should correspond the needs of research community. The first step in this field is selecting the appropriate characters. Interviewer's dominance on the topic of interview is considered as one of the important factors in an interview's success. Thus, dealing with the basic studies and detailed questions is an important process in an oral history interview. Interviewer has to revive the bygone memoirs in the interviewee's mind by designing wise questions and encourage him to discuss and explain about the subject. Interviewer should recognize the interviewee's role in discussed events and clarify his connection with the topic of interview. As much important this role is in the genesis of the event, the interview will worth more from historians' point of view. When the party conflicts or disputed issues between several groups are involved, the interviewer should interview both parties that agree and disagree. So that is how the historians use the oral documents as an evidence to understand the past events.

Oral History Background
Historians began to use the oral history resources about recent era since they could benefit the principles and methods of sociologists and anthropologists in interview. The main purpose of this affair was developing historic knowledge in the fields that the evidences and witnesses are scares, unilateral or rare. In Europe this kind of research was used by T. Fisher Unwin and Jane Cobdon Unwin in the beginning of 20th century. Their method was printing ads in newspapers and asking the people who had bitter experiences of the government's special politics to offer their oral or written information, for example the ones whom government ejected from their lands without paying any money.
Since WWII the historians have strongly been relying on the oral sources about studying the illiterate societies especially Africa. For example: in some African countries the name of some ex leaders of the tribes and the outcomes of their authority period was orally narrated. Although this information was not completely accepted and some other branches in science like archeology and linguistics also got involved, it was used as a historic source. About colonial era, the sources were oral and more various and by comparing and contrasting them with each other and written sources it was possible to achieve the documentary information so that through using these methods new dimensions of African history added to the world history. (3)(4).
Now most of governmental or private research organizations are active in oral history. Some of the governmental centers that have established the oral history archive are:
     1. National Archives of Singapore in which the oral history sector started to work in 1979.
     2. The Central Archives of the State (Archivio centrale dello Stato)
     3. The Ministry of Defense (Ministerio de Defensa de España,MdD)
     4. The National Archives of Britain
       And several associations such as:
1. Institute of History and Biography in Germany (Institut für Geschichte und Biographie)
2. The Oral History Program at The University of Essex, (Sociology Department), UK      Baylor University Institute for Oral History, Texas, USA
3. Oral History and Sound Recordings in state library of New South Wales in Sydney- Australia
4. National Oral History Association of New Zealand
5. Canadian Oral History Association
6. Oral History Association of Russia, c/o History Department, Kirov State Medical Institute
7. Public Memory Archive (Oral history centre and archive) at University of Malta
8. Oral history Network of Mexico at The National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH)
9. Brazilian Oral History Association in Pernambuco Federal University
10. Asocación de Historia Oral de la República Argentina (AHORA)
11. Memory bank of Cayman Islands in George Town at National Archive
12. Oral History (Sabah), Sabah State Archives, Malaysia,
13. Oral History Archive (Zimbabwe), National Archives of Zimbabwe,

Different types of oral history usage
Oral history is used to collect information. For example state institutions gather documentary information for understanding history of places, organizations and the places relevant with themselves, through this way. Also in archival institutes, oral history is used to fill up the information vacuity of the documents. Private institutes collect the information by the order of public institutes or private order, by means of oral history. One of interesting samples of such activity is the works of Living Legacies Institute in South California that started to work 1988 and in addition to preparing peoples' family history, provides history of social institutes like temples and clubs too. It seems that the number of these institutes in U.S is increasing. Furthermore they have enforced some of oral history programs in museums and between art crowds. California University is also one of the active centers about oral history.
This generality has achieved such a position that some teach the oral history interviews to the students at school too. For example Living Legacies Institute in California, teach children how to interview their grandparents or in one of schools in England the children between 7-8 and 9-10 in elementary school and also the high school students were taught oral history. The recent example focus on the research about one of the centered schools of London that its students were transferred to a village in the suburbs while the Second World War started in order to save them. At first some of the mentioned students and their hosts in that village were identified and gathered in a place. Then oral history interview with them started by the teachers and students. During these sessions both desired subject and students behavior were surveyed psychologically and based on their interests. Another interesting project in oral history is oral history Coast project. In this project - that was completed between June and October of 1990 – 500 hour interviews in 17 languages were done with the people of nine cities from Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Chad, Sudan, Ethiopia. One purpose of this project was showing how it is possible to benefit oral history in development process by talking to farmers, ranchers and immigrants. This project was looking for attaining a better understanding of traditional method in exploiting the land, lard lease, agriculture and shepherd systems, the advancing reasons of desert and the other life aspects in Ivory Coast.
Dale E. Treleven, Oral History Program, University of California, believes that oral history is important due to sociology since in an era that the modern forms of media such as Fax, Email are rapidly substituting letters, daily memoirs and other traditional documents, oral history produces an eternal document. More over this is certainly a fact that history is written by the super powers and it is written about them. But oral history is trying to correct it and it means changing history journalism in to Folks down.
Art Hansen, director of the Center for Oral and Public History at Fullerton State University believes whatever encourages the historical view, is useful. No matter it is based on family information or local information or the data relevant to the organizations.            

Oral history in Iran
In Iran after Islamic revolution, oral history was particularly respected as a way of historical research. However before revolution some magazines like Waheed, took some steps in this direction by majors' encouraging about writing some memoirs of their life period, this action was somehow different from the way of gathering information in oral history by Islamic revolution most affiliates of the last regime escaped and most fighters and political prisoners released from the jails. On the other hand opening the knot that brings most experts to silence created a suitable atmosphere to express the hidden experiences and possessions. Since then some inside or outside Iran intended to interview these experts .It was a brilliant opportunity in which most ambiguities could be expressed and discussed.
Islamic Revolution History Foundation was one of the believers involved in oral history interview recording that was formed in order to codify the Islamic Revolution history. Other active organizations in Iran were National Documents Organization or the recent deputy of National Documents Organization and National Library of I.R.Iran, The Bureau for the Islamic Revolution Literature, Institute for Publishing and Arranging Imam Khomeini's Works, Astan-e Quds Razavi and National Museum of Medicine. We can name the sector of Middle East Studies in Harvard University, Iranian Studies Organization, the Oral History Center of Iranian Jews, and National Institute of Social History in Amsterdam, outside Iran.
Former National Documents Organization of Iran started its activity in 1993 and during eleven years has interviewed about oral history with 300 scientific, cultural, political and art characters for about eleven thousand hours up to now.

The problems and raised criticism of the work
Oral history as the same as any other research method has faced different problems. Such problems that sometimes exist generally for any kind of oral history interviews or the problems which particularly we encounter in Iran such as:

1. At all in oral history interview the historical event is discussed from a special person's point of view. Personal views affect one's perception and sometimes cause the narrated memory to be expressed selectively therefore it is selected between all memoirs by interviewer and based on his own taste. People apply such orientation through any political and belief background. Thus considering this fact is very important in understanding history.
2. In oral history interview, the interviewee always considers himself as innocent of any act of error and often restates the events from a positive position.
3. In oral history interview, personal imaginations sometimes enter history area, in a way that champion creator mind of some ones give additional foliage to historical events and give unreal color and odor to them. For example: in Mohammad Hussein Seif Qazi's execution (one of the followers and fellows of Qazi Mohammad Mahabadi) it was told that he was pulled up to the gallows three times. Also some say: this has happened twice and even they tell that he was strangled on the ground and then he was pulled up to the gallows. So although the ultimate reality is Seif Qazi's execution, its mode is not agreed yet.
4. One of the other general problems of oral history is the high age, poor hearing and inappropriate physical problems of the interviewee. This issue makes the communication so hard and the work remains incomplete.
5. Sometimes although the interviewees accept the interview, refuse from talking about some subjects for various reasons, some want to test interviewer. Some don't know him on their own level. Some are bounded with moral values. Some are loyal to their ex relationships with higher authority and because of any reasons avoid telling the whole story.
6. The tips mentioned above are about the interviewees, but the interviewer himself also can be the source of some problems. As interviewee has a basic role in subject of interview, the interviewer could also impress the thoughts and feelings of the interviewee by his behavior or clumsily comment and decrease the quality of the interview.
Raised criticism about oral history lack of general criticism about oral history interviews, not training the interviewers, using the journalistic, standards, not dedicating enough time for research and haste in doing work, are some criticism can be raised for oral history.
At all this criticism is divided into three groups:
1. The style of interview
2. Research standards in order for getting prepared for interview
3. The issues about historical methodology (5)
About the first item, while the interviewer acknowledge with the techniques of interview. He should be well prepared for interview through necessary studies. As a result there won't be anything wrong in his work. The second problem is what not only the history researchers but also all historians face. The sources should be scanned, witnesses should be investigated carefully and the expressed subjects should be documented in interview.
In third term or historical methodology some say: the interviewees of oral history are not the representatives of society that the interview with them could be able to give a correct perspective of intended era. Here we should know that the interviewee of oral history is not selected as a statistic representative of society, but he has been chosen to identify a historical event. Experts discuss different topics about the type of gathered data in oral history. Such as Cutler who believes that in any interviews of oral history, when its content is written on the paper at last, it is a raw material like the other historical sources, while Benison believes that oral history, is kind of auto biographical memory and explains the role of interviewer as an interpretation initial.
To his mind, interview is an initial classification and regularization. Lynd says that oral history itself is a kind of history expressed in the form of fluent words of conscious ego. In his response Lemisch considers the oral history as a bounded document that has created a new historical synthesis. In response to above theories, we should know that in oral history interviews, history journalists have active role and they themselves create history and carry regulation, selection and interpretation of history's background with themselves. Against letters, documents and evidences and other archival materials, such information is created by history journalists after the events, so they are so unique documents.
In Ronald Grele's opinion interview has a conversational narrative structure; "Conversational" because of the connection between interviewer and interviewee, and narrative, for its form that is like story telling. While these narrations chronology can be based on personal memoirs, but they're not auto biography or biography due to the interview of oral history is based on interaction between interviewer and interviewee. An interview can't be separated from the situations in which it is created.
To analyze each interview correctly we should study combination of social and psychological analysis related to the connection between interviewer and interviewee and check the suitability of their status.

1. Samaran, Charles, L'Histoire et ses méthodes
2. http://www.oralhistory.org/do-oral-history/
3. Blackwell History Encyclopedia
4. Danny/Feingold: Something permanent to hold on to, Los Angeles Times, July30, 1997
5. Ronald J. Grele. Movement without aim: The Oral history Reader by Robert
Perk and Alistair Thomson. London: Routledledge

 Source: Surah Cultural Monthly, No: 36

By: Shafiqeh Niknafs
Translated by: Elham Sabahi