Shadows in The Caliphate: A Brief History of the Assassins

Collective memory does not hold the Middle-Ages in high regard. Instead, it is remembered as a bloody era featuring deadly Crusades, the Inquisition’s brutal (original, though) torture practices, and empires regularly changing hands much to the discontent of medieval townspeople. This epoch was, indeed, a shadow theatre.

As soon as the 11^th century, several secret societies flourished across medieval Europe. Chivalry orders such as the Templars – whose fate was to involve a gruesome curse and a legendary treasure – were amongst the key players longing for the capture of the Holy Land of Jerusalem. But other shadowy factions were given birth without the Pope’s blessing.

At the time, the immense Persian Empire was not a unified, joint force aimed at the invading Crusaders. It featured internal splits, especially religious divisions between Shia and Sunni Muslims – a dispute, unfortunately, still unsolved to this day. Given that the Sunni Seljuqs mastered most of the Syrian and Persian territory in the late-11^th century – from the Persian Gulf to the Karakoram mountain range that today lies at the border of India and Pakistan – most followers of the Shia doctrines felt directly threatened by the rising power of the occupying forces.

As a result, a dissident group known as the Nizari Ismailis founded in 1072 its own secret order to resist Seljuq authority: the « hachichiyyin » – or, as they would become widely known, the Assassins – who settled into mountain strongholds scattered across Persia and Iran. Led by a mysterious man named Hasan ibn al-Sabbah, they trained themselves the arts of fighting and concealing themselves, were taught foreign languages and horseback riding, and soon became masters in disguise and deceit. Given their drop in numbers compared to the Seljuqs’ massive army, they learnt to be discreet and quiet, to walk with catlike stealth and lurk in the shadows. That was to become their best asset.

The Assassins’ discretion enabled them to perform surgical strikes, most of the time in the form of targeted killings (something that hardly ever occurred at the time, although Crusaders and Seljuqs probably made good use of it too). The assassinations were committed by believers known as fedayin, often in broad daylight and public places in order to catch everybody’s attention so that no viziers, caliphs or ever sultans would feel safe. A fedayin could infiltrate the court of an enemy sovereign for months, go unnoticed until a good opportunity would present itself, and only then eliminate his target in a blade’s silvery flash.

In addition to the element of surprise that was the Assassin’s trademark, their stealth guaranteed them to induce terror or chaos in the minds of their enemies – a foretaste of psychological warfare, a less-brutal-hence-rather-uncommon-tactic at the time. A famous story highlights the dexterity of a fedayin who crept into a Seljuq’s sultan stronghold at nighttime, right under his bodyguards’ noses. On the next day, the awakening sultan noticed in horror a dagger stuck up at the foot of his bed. He vividly remembered having sent off, the day before, two Ismaili missionaries willing to negotiate an end to hostilities; was it the motive behind this terrifying intrusion? A letter written by Hasan ibn-al Sabbah soon confirmed the sovereign’s fears: “Did I not wish the sultan well that the dagger which was struck in the hard ground would have been planted on your soft breast.” Needless to say that a truce was immediately concluded between the Nizari Ismailis and the Seljuq leader…

Myths and legends also surround the Assassins’ epic in the Persian Empire, and contribute to deepen the grey zones historians hope to shed light upon. It is said for instance that during a meeting between Count Henri II of Champagne and Rashid ad-Din Sinan – the latter became the Assassins Grandmaster at the turn of the 12^th century – both leaders bragged about operating the most powerful army. To cut the argument short, Sinan ordered one Assassin to throw himself from the top of the castle – which he did, proving the flabbergasted count the faithfulness of his Nizari subjects.

 

Could such a secret, effective and tenacious sect have overpowered the Seljuq authority and eventually spanned the entire world? The assumptions promoted by modern, pop-cultural versions of the « hachichiyyin » could have proved true, were it not for the mistake of an Uzbek leader who got a pack of Mongol merchants executed in 1218. Genghis Khan himself sought revenge, launching in East Asia one of the most devastating invasions in world history.

Entrenched into their mountain strongholds, the Assassins starved while the Mongolian hordes washing over Persia extended their empire (up to 24 million square meters in 1268, two and a half times the surface of the US). Their mysterious society finally disappeared three centuries following its birth, at the end of the 13^th century. Alamut was besieged, and nearly all its occupiers were captured or killed by the Mongols, who also – classic invader move – set the castle’s library on fire. Hence the lack of documentation about the Assassins’ origins, practices and beliefs…

 

 

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Sources:

• National Geographic, « La véritable histoire des sociétés secrètes » [FRENCH], Hors-Série juin/juillet 2018.
• https://www.britannica.com/story/who-were-the-assassins
• https://www.thoughtco.com/history-of-the-assassins-hashshashin-195545
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassins
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_empires