Here a very accurate map showing the Sunni areas in Iran.
What should be noted is that many Iranian Sunnis live in major Shia cities like Tehran, Isfahan Shiraz and even Mashad (that has a native Sunni minority of around 15%!). Also conversions from Shi’ism to Sunnism are very common among Ahwazi Arabs in the last few decades (a phenomenon even bitterly acknowledged by the Shia clergy and regime official more than once), so the Khuzestan province should be clustered with Sunnis, especially the western Arab part of it.
Most Iranians have been fooled into believing that the Safavid Dynasty was a Golden Age in Iran, a period that witnessed a cultural flowering under the charismatic Isma’il and and his son Tahmasp, the first two Shahs of the dynasty. Iran’s border were restored again and other romanticised half-truths. What most Iranians are not told (neither by the Shia clergy nor ultra-Iranian nationalits) is how the Turkic Safavids slaughtered thousands upon thousands of Persians (Sunnis), starting with the elite, the thinkers and scholars.
The Ottoman sultan, Bayezid II, in his message congratulated the first Safavid king (Shah) Isma’il on his victories and advised him to stop destroying the graves and mosques of Sunni Muslims. Shah Isma’il was convinced of the righteousness of his cause and the evil of Sunni Islam; he did ignore the request and later even massacred entire Persian towns that refused to accept Twelver Rafidi Shi’sim. The new sultan in Constantinople after 1512, Sultan Selim, warred against the extreme form of Twelver Rafidi Shi’ism that was enforced on the lands of Persia, he started killing 40,000 Shi‘is accused of being Kizilbash or Safavid agents, and imprisoned or deported thousands of others.
People inside Iran, especially in the last two decades have realised how much more religious and conservative Iranian Sunnis are compared to their Shi’ite countrymen. This is based on numerous factors, one undoubtedly includes the widespread distrust and often dislike of the Shia clergy by a large number of Iranian Shi’ites, a phenomenon that is pretty much non-existing amongst Iranian Sunnis. On top of that there is the high fertility rate amongst Iranian Sunni that has caused Shi’ite hardliners in Iran to express their worries about worrying decline of the Shi’ite population of Iran and the steadily growing Sunni population (where birth rates are often more than double and thrice compared to the Shia population). Some Shia clerics even have openly called for government intervention to reduce (!) the number of Iranian Sunni by means such as not giving them passports.
Shaikh al-Hadith Nematullah Tawhidi was a charismatic Iranian Sunni scholar from the Sistan and Baluchestan Province in south-east Iran. A teacher of one of the Sunni institutes in Zahedan city. He was known for his sharp mind and tongue and for his bravery as he openly defended Sunni beliefs without any comprise despite all the pressure from the Iranian regime and the Shia clergy. He also openly refuted Shia allegations (in defence of Sahaba, the mother of the believers ‘Aisha etc.) against Ahl al-Sunnah and warned against the veneration of saints and graves that are so common in Iran and were actively propagated by the regime and the Mullahs of Qom in Sunni regions of Iran. He surely lived up to his name, a man of monotheism, who lived by it and died upon it.
Whether or not an ethnic Persian exists in the world is a topic where one will hear many opinions and arguments. Some (often Iranian nationalists) argue that the Persian-speakers of Iran are not an ethnic group but rather a lingual group (like most Arab speakers in the Arab world who although are culturally and linguistically Arab, yet very few can claim to be of pure Arab origin, although undoubtly many do have Arab ancestry).
The 5th of March (1996/1416) marks the day when Shaykh Abdul-Malik Mollazadeh (Iranian Baloch Sunni scholar) was assassinated by Iranian intelligence agents.
Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal’s family was originally from Basra, Iraq, and belonged to the Arab Banu Shayban tribe. His father was an officer in the Abbasid army in (inhabited by Persians to this day) Khorasan and later settled with his family in Baghdad, where Ahmad was born in 780 CE. Ibn Hanbal had two wives and several children, including an older son, who later became a judge in Sunni (Pre-Safavid) Isfahan. What pretty much unknown, even to many students of knowledge, is that Imam Ahmad could speak fluently Persian!
h Ibn Saʿd Ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Fahmī al-Qalqashandī (الليث بن سعد بن عبد الرحمن الفهمي القلقشندي) was the chief representative, Imam, and eponym of the Laythi school of Islamic jurisprudence from Egypt and of Persian origin.
Imam Fakhr Al-Din Al-Razi (the Tehrani) Shafi’i Ash’ari scholar
e Samanid dynasty (Persian: سامانیان, Sāmāniyān), also known as the Samanid Empire (819–999). It was the first native Persian empire after Arabs ruled Persia for around 300 years. This first ever Persian empire after the Muslim conquest by Caliph ‘Omar Ibn Al-Khattab (may Allah be pleased with him) was not just Muslim but Sunni to the core. The Samanids ruled in Khorassan and Transoxiana. During the era of the Abbasids they ruled as Amirs of Khorasan, appointed by the Abbasid Caliph in Baghdad. The Samanids were of Persian dehqan origin with roots stemming from Balkh (to this day a majority Persian-Tajik area in Afghanistan) in present-day northern Afghanistan.They claimed descent from the House of Mihran, high nobility of the Sassanian and Parthian (ancient Khorassan) empires conquered by the Muslims.
Abū Ḥamīd bin Abū Bakr Ibrāhīm aka Attar Al-Nishaburi* (Nishabur lies in current day Iran, in the Khorasan province where ethnic Persian Khorassani Sunnis still represent a large minority, even in Mashad city) on one of the accusations of the Shia against the two noble Shaykhs (Abu Bakr and Omar):
Our master Abdullah Ibn ‘Abbas had many famous students, among them many non-Arabs such as the leader of the Salaf, Sa’id Ibn Jubayr (of Habashi/Ethiopian origin), ‘Ikramah (Berber, North African origin) and ‘Ataa Ibn Abi Rabah (of Nubian/Sudani origin) and many others.
Imam Abu Sulayman Dawud b. ‘Ali b. Khalaf al-Asbahani (Isfahani) al-Kufi (815–883/4 CE, 199-269/270 AH) was a scholar of Islamic law (formely a Shafi’i) during the Islamic Golden Age. He is widely regarded as the founder of the Zahiri school of thought.
Kerman province is home to ethnic Persians, the absolute majority of them have been forced to Shi’ism during Safavid onslaught in 16th century. Today, a minority (mainly Baloch tribes) is Sunni (Hanafi), mainly in the south of the province.
His full name was Abul-Qasim Hussein ibn Muhammad Al-Raghib Al-Isfahani (often written as Asbahani), also known as Ibn Al-Mufaddal. He was of Persian descent, born in Isfahan (modern day Iran). He lived in around 502 AH (eleventh-century A.D.) and was a scholar of Qur’anic exegesis and the Arabic language.
