The common Confusing with Sunni Persians

Bismillah

There are widespread misconception regarding the Sunni Persians, some people still think that all of the Sunni Persians in Iran are actually from Arabian descent, due to the arrival of the Huwala and Sunni Persians to Arabia and the claims of some of them to be Arabs. Some people even go so far in their ignorance to deny the existence of Persian Sunnis at all ! This post shall clarify some facts regarding the Fars (Persian) Sunnis of Iran.

Iran still has some big cities which include Sunni Muslims, else of Bandar Lengeh and Bandar Charak there is Ahvaz near the Iraqi border and Mashhad except that the latter two cities didn’t have the Huwala whom only travelled to the west cost of Persia, Ahvaz especially had and still has Arabs from Iraq. There are still Sunni mosques in both Bandar Lengeh and Bandar Charak. (with Arab and Sunni Persian inhabitants).

The other groups whom arrived to Arabia were original Sunni Persians. Their villages are many and can still be located mostly in the Fārs Province as well as Hormozgān Province. And these locations obviously still has Sunni mosques up until now. In later years Some of the those Sunni Persians left Iran to the GCC countries to work or to make Business many of them moved to the GCC countries in the same period when the Arabian Huwala tribes were exiled from Iran, thus creating a confusing issue of how to distinguish between Persians and Arabs, since both had the same faith and Persian Language as well as influence.

Of the reasons Sunni Persians left for the Arabian peninsula, was that most had the anti-relegious pressure of Iran’s former king Muhammad Reza Shah. The Shah forced everyone to accept his Liberal ideas or what he called it the White Revolution, and he disliked religious people from both faiths. Furthermore Sunni Persians and Sunni Iranians in general were discriminated for not being twelver Rafidhite Shi’ites as the majority of their folk was.

This led many Sunni Persians to leave Persia, not only to the Arabian peninsula, but to other parts of the world too. But because the GCC countries were the nearest point, it was the Persians first choice to leave for. It had also many job opportunities by that time so they could start a new life.

Until recent years, Iran official census still shows such coastal areas as mostly populated by Arabic ethnic people which confirms origins of Huwala that migrated back to Arabia are Arabs since they lived in same areas. This however is useful to distinguish between sunni Persians and Sunni Arabs in Iran^.

Sunni Persians are therefore present in the neighbour areas of Iran such as the Gulf countries. There are many Sunni Persians in the Khaleej (Gulf), they make out about half of the inhabitants of the UAE ! and all of them got the citizenship and even some of them became ministers like the minister of Education who is originally from Bastak (Persian Sunni city in south Iran) and two other ministers that come from the Awaz province which is close to Lar. And not to mention that the rulers of the emirate of Sharjah are the Qassimi familly who immigrated from Bandar Lengeh 200 years ago are of Sunni Persian heritage !

The sunni persians are very respected and most of them work as tradesman while the rest are also Engineers and doctors (actually the majority of Emaratis who work in these jobs are sunni Persians).And we will give you the name of some of the persian families in the UAE who carry the name of their original persian hometowns:

Bastaki,Zarouni, Harmoodi,Awadi,gergawi, Janahi,Ahli,Khokerdi, Koheji and Khoori.

Bastak for example is still a city in south Iran with Sunni Persian inhabitants. The history of Bastak shall clarify how the Sunni Persians suffered by the hands of the Safavids and their offsprings the Rafidhite Shias.

When the Safavids under Ismail I decided to convert everyone residing in current day Iran from Sunni to Shiite Islam in 1501, they started arranged attacks and massacres against the Sunni Persians who refused to convert. As a result, many Sunni Persians left their hometowns for the Zagros mountains. After the Battle of Chaldiran where the Safavids lost to the Ottoman the Sunni Persians descended from the mountains to begin a new life in the land they named “Bastak”, meaning barrier or backstop signifying barrier from Shiite Safavids’ attacks and influences.

Many Bastaki people emigrated to Dubai, Bahrain, and Kuwait after refusing to pay taxes to Nasir al-Din, the last member of the Qajar dynasty and refusing to give up their Sunni faith. Today, there are many Bastakis in Dubai, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Oman, who have carried their unique Persian culture, language, and architecture with them. They have named their neighbourhood in Dubai, Bastakeyah, after their small city of Bastak in southern Persia, and use an old Persian style of cooling architecture that is represented in the Badgir (”wind catchers”) that direct the wind into the houses and cool the interior of the houses, a very common style throughout the city of Yazd.