Book Review

Sir Saeed

Compiled by: Iranian Oral History Website
Translator: Fazel Shirzad

2025-5-7

Note: The book “Sir Saeed” is a documentary [narrative] of the life of martyr Seyyed Mohammad Saeed Jafari, written by Mohammad Mehdi Hemmati and published by Rahiyar Publications. In March 2024, this book was recognized as one of the selected documentary biographies in the 21st edition of the Sacred Defense Book of the Year Award. The following text is a review on the mentioned book.

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The Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution referred to martyr Seyyed Mohammad Saeed Jafari three times during his visit to Kermanshah in October 2011. He first said in a large gathering of Kermanshah people:

“A month after the victory of the revolution, that is, in October 2011, it was the young men of Kermanshah who went to defend the Sanandaj Army garrison; the first groups that mobilized and set out to defend against the counter-revolution went, some of whom are among the famous martyrs of Kermanshah.”[1]

The next day, in the gathering of families of martyrs and veterans of Kermanshah, he said:

“I mentioned yesterday that the youth of Kermanshah, a month after the victory of the revolution, felt the need to go. Martyr Mohammad Saeed Jafari, the pioneering and pioneering martyr, went with his comrades to defend the Sanandaj Army barracks; they understood what this defense meant; what it meant for the counter-revolution to dominate a military barracks. This early understanding, understanding in time, acting in time, and responding to the need is a prominent point that should not be overlooked[1].”

On the third day, in a meeting with the Basij of the province, he said again:

“In the very west of the country, in the southeastern region of the country, in the northeastern region of the country, in the southwestern region of the country, in various regions, the arrogant, the enemies of the revolution, the enemies of Islam, the enemies of Iran had set off incidents. On that day, young believers and heartbroken people, with the spontaneous spirit of the Basij, were falling into the field and sacrificing their lives, as I mentioned in Kermanshah, both yesterday in my meeting with the families of some of the martyrs, and in my speech the day before yesterday, where one could see these spontaneous popular movements, these young people, starting from Kermanshah itself a month after the revolution[2].”

This repeated reference to martyr Seyyed Mohammad Saeed Jafari had a different meaning for the people of Kermanshah; a meaning more than glorifying the leader of the revolution for one of the province’s prominent martyrs. Sir Saeed was martyred only thirty-six days after the start of the imposed war; but his activities before and after the revolution were so extensive and had such an impact on the cultural, social, and political atmosphere of Kermanshah that even after forty years since his martyrdom, he still has serious supporters on one side and staunch opponents on the other. Thus, we decided to begin an effort to get to know him and then introduce him.

First period: previous efforts (2001 to 2012)

Previously, two books had been published about sir Saeed: One, A Man Forever, by Mr. Seyyed Shahab al-Din Jafari, one of sir Saeed's younger brothers, published by Shahed Publishing in 2005; the other, Brighter Than the Sun, by Mr. Mehrdad Rezaeifar, published by Sarir Publishing in 2008. These two books were fictional biographies and should not be judged by the standards of memoirs and oral history; however, the picture they painted of Sir Saeed and the history of Kermanshah was not very well received by Sir Saeed's family and friends.

After this effort began at the “The Bulwark of Faith and Thoughts Cultural Institute”, another book titled The First Commander was published in 2014 by the Maarif Publishing House. This book consisted of forty short memoirs about Sir Saeed that were compiled by Mr. Reza Karimi. Of course, no independent research was conducted to write this book. More important than these three books was the extensive effort that was made years ago to write Sir Saeed’s biography. Around 2001, several students of the Kermanshah Sisters Seminary, during an exhibition for the province’s martyrs, gradually became acquainted with the martyr Seyyed Mohammad Saeed Jafari, and their connection with the Foundation for the Preservation of Works and the Propagation of the Values ​​of Sacred Defense of Kermanshah Province, eventually led to the approval of a project to research sir Saeed’s life. The same student sisters took responsibility for it. They contacted sir Saeed’s family, and after a while, Dr. Abdul Saleh Jafari[3], sir Saeed’s son, also expressed his readiness to accompany him. The student sisters in this project, during the years 2001 to 2003, interviewed many of Sir Saeed's relatives and collected a large number of photographs and documents. The result of this effort in the first stage was a text of 100,000 words that was bound in a 1,000-page mock-up with a green hardcover. For this reason, it was referred to as the "Green Book". This book, which was prepared mainly to present the results of the research and perhaps its editing was not suitable for a book ready for publication, was delivered to the Kermanshah Monuments Preservation Foundation for evaluation. Unfortunately, this effort, with all its strengths and weaknesses, was not published. Even the Provincial Monuments Preservation Foundation did not do anything special to correct and complete it. The student sisters, who had worked hard for this project, were also unable to publish it themselves and were discouraged by the behavior of the Kermanshah Monuments Preservation Foundation. Despite his many work and academic commitments, Sir Saleh tried for several years to correct and complete it; however, the vastness and dispersion of the material on the one hand and the diverse dimensions of sir Saeed’s personality on the other, had prevented him from achieving a desirable structure for publication. The fields of activity and events in Sir Saeed’s life were truly vast and diverse, and a text that could narrate his life from beginning to end was not easily available. Of course, in 2008, the book Brighter Than the Sun was published, which was apparently written based on the narratives in the Green Book; but it did not meet the expectations of sir Saeed’s family and friends.[4]

Around 2009, two years before the Supreme Leader’s visit to Kermanshah, sir Saleh asked us to help publish the interviews and documents that had been collected about his father in cyberspace. He, who had almost despaired of the success of his efforts over the past few years, wanted at least this content to be published in its raw form on a website so that other researchers could use it. He provided us with the transcripts of twenty-eight interviews. The interviews were handwritten, on forms. We also borrowed a printed copy of the Green Book. Although the text of the book was typed, Sir Saleh did not have the file for it. Inevitably, in addition to the interviews, we also typed the entire book. Some of the Green Book narratives were not in the interviews. This meant that the interviews were longer than the twenty-eight sessions we were given.

The content was uploaded to a website in a simple category and is now available.[5] Unfortunately, this effort was not very useful and effective; on the one hand, the content still needed to be corrected, completed, and processed, and on the other hand, the site software was quite basic and we had no plan to improve it. As a result, it was not seen much and was not used.

The second period: we got ready (from 2012 to 2017)

After the Supreme Leader’s visit to Madzala, we decided to roll up our sleeves ourselves; the new round of activities began almost at the beginning of 2012. Before anything else, we cataloged the previous interviews and the text of the Green Book by topic. We also informed Sir Saleh of our decision in a meeting. During his several years of effort, Sir Saleh had collected a large number of photographs and documents about his father’s activities; perhaps tens of thousands of pages. We agreed to go to his house in Tehran on a weekly basis and scan and categorize the photos and documents so that they would be preserved and useful for ourselves and other researchers.

Gradually, we compiled a list of sir Saeed’s relatives from different periods of his life. Some could be unique narrators of certain periods of Sir Saeed’s life or activities; but the possibility of interviewing them was not provided to the student sisters or sir Saleh himself. Accordingly, we ourselves began a new round of interviews with new narrators. In the first six months of 2012, twenty-seven interviews were conducted with eleven of Sir Saeed’s friends, totaling more than fifty hours.

At that point, we did not have much knowledge or experience in the field of memoirs and oral history. Our group had not yet achieved sufficient cohesion and we did not have the necessary financial and hardware resources. For this reason, things were progressing slowly and ambiguously. From that moment on, we met Hojjatoleslam Saeed Fakhrzadeh. He knew sir Saeed and readily agreed to hold a few special workshops for us; but “you have to travel a lot to make the raw material cooked.” sir Saleh was very busy and was constantly traveling between Tehran and Qom. Despite this, he would give us one afternoon almost every week, part of which was spent reporting on the progress of the work and the rest on scanning and organizing documents. He always insisted that we first prepare a book for publication from what we had, namely the results of previous research, and he was not very supportive of interviews and new research. He was afraid that we would drown in a mass of scattered material and, after a while, tired and disappointed, abandon the work without any results.

This concern was correct. But it was only part of the reality. On the other hand, we had gone through previous research, but we had not yet arrived at a convincing plan for compiling the material. Perhaps a kind of perfectionism had also fueled our newness, and we could not settle for publishing a weak or mediocre book. The slow progress of the project gradually diminished Sir Saleh's hopes for us, to the point that our meetings were suspended and the work of scanning documents and photographs remained unfinished; but the project did not stop, and we hoped that with the fruits of our efforts and the preparation of the book, we would be able to regain sir Saleh's trust. Gradually, we were able to divide Sir Said's life into several periods. In each period, important activities and events were identified, and we arranged the memories of different narrators in a list, based on priority and delay in time and with a logical theme. While consulting with some professors, we came to the conclusion that we would seek help from a more experienced writer and entrust him with writing the final text. We thought that writing was the main focus of the project. We read and evaluated many books and had numerous meetings with different writers. This work was done in the first half of 2013. One of the suggested authors was Ms. Mahboobeh Mearajipour, whom Professor Ahmad Shakeri introduced to us. Her latest book, Abbas Dast-e-Tala, was published by Fatehan Publishing House in early 2013 and, after being praised by the Supreme Leader, had attracted attention. After much discussion, debate, and back-and-forth, we reached an agreement with Ms. Mearajipour, and it was agreed that we would provide her with the research text to read and then discuss the writing style. We were also responsible for conducting additional interviews if necessary.

After reading the research text, Ms. Mearajipour's opinion was that most of the memories were general and that we needed more details to write an attractive text; in addition, some memories were ambiguous. She gave us her questions about each of the memories so that we could conduct supplementary interviews. The second round of interviews began approximately in the second half of 2013 and continued until the end of the year. During this time, about fifty face-to-face and telephone interviews were conducted with about forty people close to Sir Saeed, totaling nearly seventy hours. After the new interviews were conducted, we gave Ms. Mearajipour the new interviews. She was supposed to write a few memories as examples and give them to us for review and review. The back and forth of memories and exchange sessions with Ms. Mearajipour were repeated many times. Her flexibility in interacting with us was gracious and exceeded expectations. This process continued in 2014; but in the end, none of the sample memoirs satisfied us, and perhaps Ms. Mearajipour herself was not very satisfied with the result of the work. Thus, after a year of effort and waiting, we came to the conclusion together that we would not continue the collaboration, and Ms. Mearajipour resigned with dignity and without a shred of complaint.

We came to the conclusion that we should write the final text ourselves. We put a lot of effort into choosing the writing style. This decision was also a source of disagreement among our group. We consulted with some professors, including Mr. Hedayatollah Behboudi and Ahmad Shakeri; we reviewed several books for editing purposes, and we even wrote some memoirs in different styles and gave them to different people as audience members to get feedback for a better decision. Finally, we chose a method that is better to introduce by using the word “compilation” instead of the word “writing”.

Behnam Bagheri was responsible for editing the final text. First, we reviewed the compilation, memory by memory, and then chapter by chapter, to eliminate any potential problems. This stage, with all its ups and downs, took nearly two years. The final text was about one hundred thousand words long, and about ten thousand words of footnotes. The text used the memories of more than seventy-five people, some of whom contributed less and some more. We were relatively satisfied with the results, and the evaluators’ feedback was also promising. Given the sensitivities surrounding Sir Saeed and some of the memories, we decided to give the book to several of the main narrators of the memories before publication and, after their approval, to proceed with publication. This effort began at the beginning of 2017 and lasted several months; but the result completely surprised us; some narrators said: “This memory is not mine at all!” Others said: “Where did I describe it like that? Bring what I said.” Some also questioned the memories of others, saying, “So-and-so said this? That’s not how it was.” These objections made us doubt the memories of other narrators whose texts we had not given them to read. How do we know that they won’t deny them after the book is published? After all, denying some memories in a book is enough to invalidate all the memories in it.

We had no documents to prove the memories we had compiled! The problem was that the interview transcript is not a document, and at least we should have had the audio of the interviews. On top of that, we had taken some memories from the text of the Green Book, which only identified the narrator, but did not specify other interview identifiers, such as the interviewer and the date of the interview. We also did not know the editing method and the extent to which the editor interfered with the text of the Green Book.

After several years of effort, we felt that all our efforts had been wasted. We followed up for a while, hoping that we could get the voices of the student sisters' interviews and separate the truth from the lies in their memories. But no matter how hard we tried, it was to no avail; at that time, we had no information about the student sisters.

The third period: a new day (from 2017 to 2019)

In the summer of 2017, we decided to use all the knowledge and experience we had gained and once again, but this time in a completely principled and calculated way, resume our efforts. There were other weaknesses in our previous effort that we had overlooked, but on that day when we were going to start from scratch, we had to fix them as much as possible.

First, we compiled our interviews for which we had audio and used knowledge management software to organize them. We recorded the specifications of all the interviews along with their video, audio, text, and photos. We had learned from experience that the transcribed transcripts of interviews are usually not accurate and differ more or less from the audio of the interview. For this reason, we listened to all the interviews again and fixed the discrepancies between their audio and text. Some interviews were not transcribed; some were selectively transcribed; The text of some was also so inaccurate that it was not worthwhile to re-listen and correct it, so we re-implemented them and then re-listened. In addition to re-listening, we recorded the contents of each interview and its quality based on memoir criteria.

In the next stage, we compiled a list of all the interviews. After much review and discussion, the final list of memoirs for the book was formed. Based on the evaluation of various memoirs, we determined the necessary supplementary interviews. In the meantime, another important point caught our attention; there were ups and downs in sir Saeed’s life that none of the narrators were willing to talk about. With the passage of thirty years since that era and the narrators’ continuous efforts during this time not to mention or even forget some unfortunate events, the narratives had gradually changed in such a way that the gaps in those events were not obvious. The narrators were accustomed to straightforward narratives and had told and heard the same ones for years; but we had discovered some of these secrets through several rounds of interviews with different people and the closeness and trust that inevitably arise in these interactions. Accordingly, we tried to find the best narrators to discuss these topics, along with supplementary interviews. Unfortunately, this path was not very smooth. Above all, time and cost constraints prevented us from conducting a detailed and complete research. This project had become very long and, quite unjustly, all previous failed attempts since 2001 were written on our shoulders. We were the heirs of a project that had not yet reached a conclusion after sixteen years. No one paid attention to the fact that we had started our efforts in 2012. Many narrators were no longer willing to be interviewed. They said: "We have been interviewing for years, but nothing has come of it. Why interview again? For now, use the same words from before." They were all older, their memories were not as fresh as before, and their physical strength and patience were no longer what they used to be. In the meantime, it was not possible to interview some important narrators, and some narrators had passed away.

Mrs. Polki, the honorable wife of sir Saeed, has never agreed to be interviewed after his martyrdom. Even Sir Saleh informed us that the martyr's wife was not happy with the memories that were indirectly narrated from her being included in the book. Perhaps the reason for this issue should be sought in her patient and secretive personality, as well as in the persecution that some political movements inflicted on sir Saeed, the consequences of which have plagued Sir Saeed's family and friends for years and still do. Due to Mrs. Polki's dissatisfaction, we have stopped discussing sir Saeed's family memories at this point. We hope that after the publication of this book, we will be able to convince her to talk.

The female seminary students had interviewed sir Saeed's parents and brothers; but since we did not have the audio of these interviews, we did not use their content. We had also interviewed Sir Saeed’s mother, two brothers, and one sister in the first round of supplementary interviews in 2013; but the content of these interviews was not very useful and we did not use them in the book. In any case, sir Saeed’s family life is one of the major shortcomings of our research. Apart from this, many other important issues have remained unsaid, which we have mentioned in the footnotes of some of the memoirs.

From the summer of 2017 until the end of that year, the interviews were almost complete. In this new round, we interviewed fourteen people close to Sir Saeed for about twenty-five hours. These interviews were of much higher quality and accuracy than the previous interviews, and the text of this book is mostly taken from them. Most of the interviews were recorded visually and some were also recorded audio. Sometimes, to clarify the interviews, we had telephone conversations with the narrators, and these telephone conversations were recorded with the other party's knowledge. Given the time and cost constraints of the project, we decided to compile and publish the book using this collected material.

The final text of the book began in the summer of 2017, almost in parallel with the supplementary interviews, and lasted until the fall of 2018. But this was not the end of the story. Before editing, we printed the final text of the book in the form of a 460-page booklet and gave it to twenty people to read and give their opinions; eight of the main narrators of the book, seven of those who were familiar with Sir Saeed and the history of Kermanshah, and five of the professors and experts in memoirs and oral history. Sending the text, reading it, and receiving the opinions took more than six months, approximately until the end of spring 2019. Interestingly, the opinion of the main narrators about the book, unlike others, was relatively negative and critical. We have evaluated the reason for this difference of opinion and critical view in the following points:[6]

1. In historical narratives, characters and events never completely match reality or the narrators’ mental image of them, and an unavoidable gap always remains. This discrepancy is more evident to the narrators, because they themselves were present at the events and understood the characters closely. Beyond this, it can be said that the narrators see this gap as greater than it really is.

2. It is natural that the narrators’ mental images of the past are not the same; especially when, over time, their intellectual and political views diverge, differences of opinion about the past also increase. One of the sensitive issues in this book was, and of course still is, the number of narrators and the differences of opinion between them.

3. Most importantly, our treatment of challenging issues in Sir Saeed’s life led to criticism of the narrators. Many of these dignitaries believed that these issues should be kept quiet and that it was not advisable to raise them. On the other hand, their sensitivity to various issues was not the same. Each of them criticized some memories and narrations, other than what the others said. Given the importance and respect we attached to the opinions of the main narrators of the book, we held numerous and relatively long meetings with each of them to gain their satisfaction. Although this effort took a lot of time and energy, it had many blessings. Of course, it was not completely successful. These negotiations ultimately led to the elimination, replacement, or completion of some memories and led us back to supplementary interviews. At this stage, we interviewed ten other people for a total of about seventeen hours, four of whom were new narrators. In this way, relatively important changes were made to the text; many important narrations were corrected and strengthened, but the main structure of the book did not change much. These interviews lasted from spring to winter 2019 and were gradually added to the text of the book. After that, the various stages of preparing the book for publication, namely: pagination, cover design, indexing, arranging documents and appendices, launching a website, etc., lasted until the end of the summer of 2010.

In the early days of the winter of 2010, while we were waiting for the respected publisher to approve the final version of the book and proceed with printing, my respected father passed away and joined his martyred companions, leaving a great sorrow in my heart. He, who was the most important narrator of this book and the greatest encourager, guide, and supporter of this effort, had been waiting for its publication for a long time and had always complained about its delay. Therefore, his departure and not seeing the fruits of all this effort in this world was and is very difficult for me.

After that, the respected publisher also suggested some corrections, and more importantly, an opportunity was provided for Sir Saleh to read the final version of the book. Before that, Sir Saleh would say: “I am not satisfied that the publication of the book be delayed in order to read and receive my opinions.” However, we believed that, given the sensitivity of the book and the delicacy of some of the issues raised in it, it was necessary for Sir Saleh to read the book before publication. In the last days of 2010, he provided us with his criticisms and opinions in the form of a detailed note. Then, in virtual discussions and several detailed in-person meetings, we examined some sensitive and key issues. Mr. Engineer Hamid Reza Rostami also attended and played an effective role in these meetings. In this way, by re-examining the documents and contacting some narrators, important historical groups and ambiguities were analyzed and clarified, which it was definitely not appropriate to publish the book without paying attention to them. Finally, the final version of the book was provided to the respected publisher for publication in November 2021.

What you will read

In compiling this book, the memoirs have been divided into five chapters:

• Chapter One: The School of Humanity

(Adolescence; from 12 to 18 years old, i.e. from 1965 to 1971)

• Chapter Two: The Noose of Saeed

(Youth; from 18 to 24 years old, i.e. from 1971 to 1977)

• Chapter Three: Under the Shadow of the Clergy

(The Era of the Revolution; from late 1977 to January 1978)

• Chapter Four: The Revolutionary Guards

(The Era of the IRGC Command; from February 1979 to January 1980)

• Chapter Five: The Principle is the Revolution

(The Era of Injustice; from January 1980 to November 1981)

The memoirs have been compiled independently of each other and the text of the book is not a continuous narrative. Of course, we have tried to arrange them according to history and to make the time of events as specific as possible. We have made every effort to select and arrange the memoirs, to balance them, and to address the different aspects of sir Saeed's personality and activities; therefore, there is a kind of hidden continuity and harmony among the memoirs. Some are short and some are long; some are narrated from one narrator and others from several narrators; but these differences have not caused heterogeneity and ambiguity in the text.

We have tried to present a fluent and clear narrative with minimal interference with the text of the interviews. We can claim that the vocabulary, sentence structure, and logic of each narrative remain intact and are completely documented in the original statements of the narrator. If it was necessary to add a word or words to remove ambiguity or make a narrative more fluent, we have placed these additions in brackets so that they can be distinguished from the narrator's statements.

At the beginning of each narrative, it is clear which narrator and which interview session it is; of course, some narratives are compiled from the sum of the narrator's statements in several interview sessions. This method has its own strengths and weaknesses, and we consciously chose it. It’s most important strength is, first of all, the preservation of more citations. So far, no documented text has been presented about Sir Saeed's life, and due to the importance of his personality in the history of the revolution in Kermanshah, one of our goals was to present a fully documented text that can be used in research and the production of other products. Secondly, this method allows the audience to summarize and judge for themselves about various personalities and events.

We should classify this text in the literary genre of "memoir". In some interviews, on challenging topics, we have approached the oral history research method, and the text has practically been formed during the conversation; but still, the aspects of memoir prevail.

Another point is also important: when we want to introduce a character through the memories of those close to him, the narrators first and foremost narrate themselves and second and incidentally deal with that character, for example, sir Saeed. In other words, the intrinsic subject of each narrative is the narrator himself and the incidental subject is sir Saeed. For this reason, in many narratives, the narrator's role in the events is more prominent than sir Saeed's. This feature may be considered a weakness of the interview or abuse of the narrator at first glance, but it is not; the nature of memory requires such a circumstance. In addition to what has been said, many memoirs have many details that are not directly related to sir Saeed. These details have been preserved in the text for several purposes: first, they introduce some details of sir Saeed's background and environment of life and activities and are useful for better understanding sir Saeed. Second, many details are of great importance in terms of social and political history. Some of these important historical details include: the various activities of the Hojjatiyeh Association in the cities, from attracting young people and holding religious meetings to confronting Baha'iism; numerous scenes from the struggles of the people of Kermanshah during the Islamic Revolution, from holding ceremonies and marches and distributing and distributing leaflets to destroying centers of corruption; the process of forming revolutionary institutions such as the Committee and the Revolutionary Guard; various operations in Kurdistan to confront the counter-revolution, etc. Such details cannot be found anywhere else except in memoir texts. Third, these details make the memoirs much more interesting and are very useful for their credibility and impact on the reader. Sometimes, some of the narrator's statements are unrelated to the main story, but mentioning them is useful; we have transferred these statements to the footnotes with the "narrator" sign. The footnote reference is briefly included at the end of the footnote, and if a footnote does not have a reference, it is attributed to the editor.

Given the number of announcements in the text of the narrations, if we wanted to include the introduction of the announcement in a footnote, it would occupy a large part of the end of most of the book's pages. On the other hand, most of the announcements are repeated on several pages of the book, but we could only introduce them at the beginning. For this reason, we moved the introduction of the announcement to a separate appendix at the end of the book and arranged it alphabetically. The references for the introduction of the announcement are also briefly included in the footnote. The book uses the narrations of thirty-five people. These narrators are also introduced in a separate section, along with the announcement.

Because oral narrations are based on the narrators' memories, they are prone to errors.[7] For this reason, one of the tasks of the researcher and author is to verify the authenticity of the narrations. Because the memories of this book are not narrated from a single narrator, but from multiple narrators, one of our problems in the research and then compilation process was the conflict and inconsistency between the narrations of multiple narrators. Most of this inconsistency has been resolved in the supplementary interviews and is not reflected in the text; however, some of it was not resolved in the supplementary interviews for various reasons. In these cases, we tried to evaluate and validate the parties to the conflict by referring to other historical sources such as books, newspapers, and documents. If we were able to systematically prefer one of the narratives, we included it in the text; otherwise, we included both narratives in the text and provided the necessary explanations in the footnotes. In addition to the above points, we examined the intersection of oral narratives with other historical sources as much as possible. If other sources confirmed or complemented the oral narratives, we included them in the footnotes. Sometimes, oral narratives did not match other historical sources. In the first place, we tried to resolve these conflicts in the supplementary interviews, and if this was not possible, we evaluated the parties to the conflict and systematically preferred one of them. Wherever methodological preference was not possible, we have included the oral narrative in the text and the results of the examination of other historical sources in the footnotes. The process of clarifying and validating the narratives took more than six months and involved extensive effort, only a small part of which can be traced in the text and footnotes. Of course, we cannot claim to have validated all the narratives and that there are no errors in the text of the memoirs; but we have used all our power to present reliable and authentic narratives.

The photographs and documents of the book, instead of the appendix chapter, are included in the text of the memoirs, and we have limited ourselves to only photographs and documents that are completely related to the memoirs. The photographs and documents should help to better understand the memoir and make it more believable; but when they appear at the end of the book, they almost lose this function. In this way, we were able to transfer the appendix chapter to the book’s website. The reader can view other photographs and documents related to each memory on this website using the codes embedded in the book.[8] This measure had several advantages: first, we were able to provide the reader with a large number of photographs and documents without restrictions; second, the reader can view the photographs and documents there in a better quality than the quality printed in the book; third, it was possible to provide audio and video appendices; fourth, by eliminating the appendices chapter, we were able to offer the book in a smaller, lighter, and cheaper format. In addition to the photographs and documents, the audio of some of the interviews and narratives has also been placed on the book’s website. The reader can listen to the desired audio on the book’s website using the codes. Of course, it was not possible to publish the audio of all the interviews and narratives; sometimes, during the interviews, things were said that were prohibited from being published publicly; Sometimes the interview was very fragmentary and it was difficult to capture a coherent narrative from it, and in practice, publishing the audio is of no value. Of course, the images, audio, and text of all interviews are preserved with us and, if necessary, it is possible to present them.

The main text of the book is the narration of the narrators in the form of various memories; but in a few cases, we have also included the text of a few documents and a few speeches by Sir Saeed himself in the main text of the book. This decision was subject to much discussion and consideration. Some professors wanted to move these sections to the appendix chapter at the end of the book; but in the end, we decided to include them in the main text of the book. We made this decision based on two premises: first, that these documents and speeches had textual value and the appendix chapter did not show the reader this importance; second, that in addition to the professors, we made the book available to a range of audiences before printing so that we could use their opinions after reading it. The feedback from these readers about our decision was unanimously positive. This work may face criticism in terms of form, but it can be defended in terms of content.

Final words

The memoirs in this book, taken together, present a not-so-complete, but very detailed picture of sir Saeed's personality. We have done our best to make this picture as close to Sir Saeed's reality as possible; but it is clear that a perfect match can never be achieved. This should not be expected from a memoir at all. Furthermore, sir Saeed's relatives, who are the narrators of the memoirs in this book, do not have a completely identical and shared mental image of Sir Saeed, and each sees and narrates him from a different angle.

The narrative of this book is contrary to the conventional and popular narrative in some matters. One of these subjects is the "Hojjatiya Association". This book does not seek to justify the thinking and actions of the Hojjatiya Association or refute the popular narrative about it; Rather, it only wants to show that the popular narrative is generally vague and to some extent political;[9] it attempts to portray the intellectual fragmentation and different functioning of the Hojjatiya Society before the revolution and then shows how the label “Hojjatiya Society” became the subject of a political movement to confront its rival at some point in the history of the revolution.

Another challenging issue is the arrival of martyr Mohammad Boroujerdi to Kermanshah and the formation of the “Western Corps,” under whose command the Kermanshah Corps was also placed. After a short time, differences emerged between Martyr Mohammad Boroujerdi as the commander of the Western Corps and sir Saeed as the commander of the Kermanshah Provincial Corps, which of course arose from the intellectual and political alignments of the country at that time. These differences initially led to sir Saeed’s resignation from command of the Kermanshah Corps and, after a while, to his expulsion and many of his forces from the Corps, and the consequences of this have continued for years after sir Saeed’s martyrdom and even to this day.

Until now, the narrative of this dispute has been one-sided.[10] At that historical juncture, opposing intellectual and political movements had raised numerous accusations and labels about Sir Saeed. Examples include Hojjati party, Savaki, capitalist, anti-Imam line, and Shiite party. This dispute created many conflicts between the Kermanshah and Western Guard forces, and naturally, sir Saeed’s close associates have many criticisms of martyr Boroujerdi. Of course, the scope of these criticisms and their language vary among the different narrators of the memoirs in this book. We have tried to narrate that dispute and criticism of Martyr Boroujerdi from the perspective of those who were part of Sir Saeed’s inner circle at that time. They have tried to present a documented and fair narrative.

The narrative of this dispute in this book is not the final narrative, and in order to conclude and judge, one must also hear the narratives of martyr Boroujerdi’s close associates. Some friends criticize our efforts and believe that in this book, we should have heard and narrated the narratives of those around Sir Saeed as well as those around martyr Boroujerdi. This criticism, in light of the suggestion, was one of our wishes and we would have liked to have talked to those around martyr Boroujerdi; but this was outside the framework we intended for this book and did not fit with the research and compilation structure we chose. The subject of this book is “Sir Saeed” and in our opinion, this collection of agreeing narratives is enough to understand his personality. The difference between the Kermanshah and Western Guards is another independent issue that research and conclusions about it do not have a serious impact on understanding sir Saeed. Of course, examining that issue is useful and valuable in its own right, and this book, as the narratives of one side of the story, will certainly be very useful for that research. Sometimes the narrative of history is accompanied by many knots and complexities. We not only did not try to eliminate these knots and complexities from the narratives of this book, but we also tried to show them to the reader and leave the judgment to him. Membership in the Hojjatiya Association is considered a negative record today; but we did not hide sir Saeed’s activities in the association and allowed the reader to read the narrative of these activities and judge them with the same negative mindset that he has today about the Hojjatiya Association. Sir Saeed had tried to infiltrate SAVAK before the revolution; but exposing this attempt after the revolution with the label of “connection with SAVAK” was the best excuse for his intellectual and political opponents to destroy him and push him away. In our opinion, the accusation of Sir Saeed being a SAVAK is ultimately cowardly; but we have presented the grounds for this accusation and left the judgment about its various dimensions to the reader. We have adopted the same method regarding other controversial issues.

It was very difficult to address these challenging issues in interviews. For many important details, only a few specific people were aware of the events, and as a result, we were not open to interviewing and gathering information. Some of these specific people have passed away, some were not available for interviews, and some, due to personal or non-personal considerations, did not agree to be interviewed on these challenging issues. For example, Sir Saeed’s disagreement with some currents in the Kermanshah Hojjatiyeh Association and ultimately sir Saeed’s departure from the association has not been fully clarified; or sir Saeed’s influence in SAVAK was among the completely secret issues that we found only one competent narrator to narrate, but unfortunately he did not agree to be interviewed. What is stated in this book may not do justice to these challenging issues, but it is ultimately what was possible for us.

Some say that incomplete treatment of these challenging issues is not right and its bad consequences may outweigh its good. Our response to these noble critics is as follows: First, a complete treatment of these challenging issues will never be achieved. Second, if a book is published about Sir Saeed that does not address these issues, it will undoubtedly be accused of a selective and one-sided narrative and lose its credibility. Third, these issues have not gone unsaid, and the intellectual and political current opposing sir Saeed has repeatedly said and published them from its own perspective. Our failure to say so is emptying the field and handing over the narrative to the other side. Let us not forget that history is not what happened, but what was narrated. Fourth, we were also very worried that we would repeat the dishonest accusations against Sir Saeed, but we would not be able to respond to them. With this concern, we asked several people to read the book before printing it and give their opinions about Sir Saeed. For those who did not know Sir Saeed, their unanimous judgment was what allayed our concerns.

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Finally, we would like to thank all the narrators of the book for their kindness and consideration and the opportunity they gave us for the interview; especially Mr. Behrouz Hemmati, Ali Asghar Samet, Farajollah Sairfi, Jalaluddin Polaki, Azizollah Sohrabi, Sadeq Ashktalakh, and Dariush Bazri, who did not hesitate to support and guide us at all stages of the work; and finally, they accepted the trouble of reading the final text of the book with an open mind and expressed the weaknesses and shortcomings of the text from their own perspective. In addition to the narrators of the book, we are also very grateful to Dr. Abdul Saleh Jafari, the son of the great Sir Saeed, who was with us at the beginning of this effort and at the end, provided us with a precious opportunity, carefully studied the text, suggested valuable points, and important historical ambiguities were resolved in discussions and meetings with him.

We are also very grateful to Professor Alireza Kamari, who always answered our small and large questions without hesitation, and who also read the final text of the book and benefited from his views. We are also grateful to Professor Hedayatollah Behboudi; we often interrupted him in the middle of his work, and he read parts of the research and compilation text and we were able to benefit from his guidance. We are also grateful to Hojatoleslam Saeed Fakhrzadeh and Messrs. Mehdi Shakeri, Hossein Nasrallah Zanjani, Hassan Rozitaleb, and Jamal Yazdani for taking the trouble to read and comment on the final text of the book.

We would like to thank Mr. Hamidreza Rostami, Seyyed Mohammad Milad Salar, Mohammad Qatrani, Mohammad Hossein Dasht-e-Bozorghi, Mohsen Bisadi, Reza Karimi, Mohammad Hossein Jalal-edini, and Ms. Azar Hemmati and Zahra Khazaei for reading the final text of the book before publication and for their useful and effective comments in improving it. We would also like to thank Mr. Mohammad Rahmani and Ruhollah Aminabadi for helping us with the library and document studies of this book. We would like to thank Mr. Sajjad Mohammadi for editing the text, Mr. Amir Allahvarn for designing the cover, and Mr. Mojtaba Movahdian for designing the book’s website. We would also like to thank Mr. Masoud Maleki and Mohammad Ali Saeb, the respected officials of the Islamic Revolution Cultural Front Studies Office, who spared no effort to ensure that our efforts were fruitful.

If there is any good in this book, it is from God, and if there is any weakness, it is from us. We hope that He will forgive us.

Mohammad Mehdi Hemmati

The Bulwark of Faith and Thoughts Cultural Institute

November 2021