Oral Tradition in Persia - A Glance

In the ancient world of Persia (map; Iran is most of Persia), only official administrative documents--such as land grants and tax records--were written. Almost no narrative survives in written form from this time--the history of the kingdom was generally passed on as an oral tradition. Tales of the exploits of "the king" -- always recounted without time and without specifics -- were told and retold by the people, thus preserving a sense of national identity. (If I find the book I read this in I will come back and add the reference. It isn't on the library shelf where I found it, as others I've perused aren't...)

This pattern continued on through the ages in this region.

Tribes kept their histories the same way, and around 1000 A.D. the Moslem poet Ferdowsi "wrote" the Book of the Kings (a storyteller's view)--a massive epic poem that collected, refined, and redacted part of this body of knowledge. Curiously, it is clear from Schoeler's work [1] that even as the written word became entrenched in Moslem society in Persia (Iran), oral knowledge was still considered superior to written knowledge. The poets of this period would have naqqali (literally 'transmitters') who would memorize the spoken poems and, as was their duty, would improve upon them by altering rhymes and rhythms to suit their taste. Written forms were a secondary result of this process, and were considered to be the 'class notes' of the individual used as an aid to memory, not a redacted collection of canonical truths. These were often not even passed on between generations--one such collection seems to me to be mentioned in the Abu Bakr origin story.


The Quran was formed in a similar manner: the angel Gabriel revealed sayings to the prophet Mohammed, which his followers in turn committed to memory. It wasn't until significantly later that a (more or less) definitive version was written down. (Wikiislam on the origins of the Qur'an - note the strong marks of oral tradition that sometimes confuse that writer.) Still, learning even the Quran from a written source provided 'weak' knowledge, and students were to seek to read any written books aloud in the presence of the author or an authorized (note the common root) 'transmitter' (naqqali) so that they could correct the text according to the higher-fidelity source. One teacher, Abu Hatim al-Sijistani, told his students:

'Do not recite [i.e. learn] the Qur'an from people who (merely) rely on Qur'an codices, and do not convey knowledge (of the Hadith obtained) from people who rely (only) on notebooks.' [1, p. 36]

Zurkaneh are now part of the Iranian National Heritage.

Thus oral traditions were an intrinsic part of life in both ancient Persia and peak-Moslem Iran. This even continues today in modern Iran in what are called "zurkanes," or "zurkaneh," meaning "house(s?) of strength. These are community centers where various athletic activities are carried out in connection with recitations of the Book of the Kings. Note how this "book" is still tightly coupled to the oral tradition: it is performed and recited (not merely read), and many villages have their own variant of it. (A storyteller researches the Shahname, or Book of the Kings)

It's underwhelming just how much isn't out there about the ancient Persian tradition--few authors even mention it. History, as my professors have said, is a written invention, and so the oral is by nature of the subject marginalized. It has made me reflect on the sorts of knowledge that I take for granted in printed, written, or otherwise static forms.

Religious knowledge is interesting from this perspective, as Mormon culture and LDS teachings encourage record keeping and literacy, whereas ancient religion relied on oral tradition--which, in some cases, was obligated to change--to pass on historical knowledge. We trust our written works to be static, and they trusted the stories they told to change--until an obsession with the permanence of that-which-is-written strikes the culture.


Sources Not Linked To
1. The Genesis of Literature in Islam: From the Aural to the Written, by Gregor Schoeler. Routledge, 2006.

Notes:
A. I always thought of "redacted" as a synonym for "censored," as most of the time I have seen it in the context of government documents being redacted. After some poking around with Google, it seems that 'to redact' is merely 'to prepare for publication.' The censorship connotation comes from a euphemistic and ameliorative usage of the word.
B. "Masters of Knowledge" is a phrase associated with the term "magus" by one author that is never referred to as such anywhere else...