A study of the Superiority of the Iranians on the Basis of Hadith

The transmitters and compilers of hadith attribute certain hadiths to the holy Prophet, peace be upon him and his household, which mainly refer to a kind of virtue and superiority of the Persians to the extent that it is said if knowledge were in Venus, the people of Persia would attain it. This superiority in narrations is mentioned at least three times in the words of “belief”, “knowledge”, and “religion”. These hadiths can be seen in the compendiums of hadiths, history books and Shii exegeses. In this article, first, the reflection of these hadiths in the narrations of the Sunnis which are more in number have been considered, and then the hadiths transmitted by the Imamis have been discussed. Afterward, their content is studied and the different views on their applications are presented. In the evaluation of these narrations a few major views have been offered, that is, some by their endorsement or silence have confirmed them, and some who are completely of recent date have denied them altogether and hold that all of them are fabricated. However, there are another view which is intermediary and calims that some of these hadiths are true and some others are corrupted. At the end by discussing the character of the transmitters and the documents of these hadiths we come to the conclusion that these hadiths from the viewpoint of the Sunnis are true but on the basis of the Shii science of hadith they are weak.