The most superficial reader of the history of the Middle Ages is not unacquainted with the Order of the Assassins, and its chief, the Old Man of the Mountain. It was not, however, till the origin and transactions of this extraordinary sect had been investigated by the learning and research of that highly gifted Orientalist, the Ritter Von Hammer, who has gleaned with industry the pages of European and Asiatic writers, that its history acquired an exact and authentic character. The work of M. Von Hammer has recently been very respectably translated by Dr. Wood.
The order of the Assassins was a branch of the great sect of Ismaelites, so called from Ismael bin Jafer, the " Seventh Islam." The esoteric doctrines of Ismaelism received a new and dangerous tincture from Abdallah ben Maimun, whose object was to undermine in secret the religion of Islam, with the view of attaining political authority. He divided his mysterious tenets into seven heads or degrees, which were imparted gradually ; the last inculcated the vanity of all religion. They were spread by means of dais, or emissaries one of whom initiated Ahmed ben Eshaas, surnamed Karmath, who became leader of the Karmathites, a band of sanguinary infidels, who despised the secret process of ben Maimun, and whose desperate atrocities and resolution of religion into policy, threatened lslamism, and in fact every faith, with extermination.
In A. H. 297, (A. D. 209) a dai, or missionary, of the sect of Abdallah, pretending a descent from Ismael ben Jafer, succeeded in seating himself on the throne of Africa, under the name of Obeydallah Mehdi, and became the founder of the Egyptian khalifs, known by the name of Fatimites. The tenets of the sect, which combined politics and religion, were disseminated, with great advantage to the Fatimite princes, throughout the Mahomedan world, and a dai, named Hassan ben Sabah Hamairi, the son of Ali, a Shyite, founded a new sect, that of the Eastern Ismaelites or Assassins.
Hassan was placed by his father under the tuition of a celebrated doctor of the Soonna, named Nowafek Nishaburi, where he had as fellow-pupils Omar Khaim, afterwards celebrated as an astronomer and poet, as Nisamulmulk, subsequently grand-vizier under three of the Seljukide sultans. The ambition of Hassan manifested itself in early years. He united with his fellow-pupils in a bond to share their future fortunes. When Nisarri became vizier, Hassan claimed from him the fulfilment of his obligation, and was invested by the vizier with titles and revenues. He treacherously endeavoured to undermine the credit of his benefactor with the sultan; but, failing, retired from court. One day, he concluded his complaints against the sultan and vizier, by observing that, if he had at his bidding but two devoted friends, he would soon have overturned the power of both. " These remarkable words," says M. von Hammet, "unveil the profound and extensive plans of the founder of the Assassins, who already contemplated the ruin of kings and ministers ; the canon of the whole policy of this order of murderers is comprised in them."
During the stormy reigns of the early Seljukide princes, Hassan Sabah was occupied in laying the foundation of his power. The dais of the Egyptian khalif, Mostansur pervaded Asia, in order to gain proselytes to infidelity and revolt, and by one of them Hassan was initiated and became a missionary and teacher of Atheism himself. He set out from Persia, whither he had retired from the court of sultan Malek, to Egypt, and was received by the khalif with the distinction to which his talents and fame entitled him. Hassan took part immediately in the political intrigues of the court ; he was involved in a quarrel with the commander in-chief, by whose influence he was thrown into prison, and thence shipped off to Africa. While on board the vessel, a storm arose ; but Hassan boldly claimed supernatural protection of peril, and defied the terrors of the storm. The vessel was driven from her course towards Syria, where Hassan landed, and proceeded to preach his doctrine throughout that country, Bagdad, Persia, and the adjoining provinces.
Having matured his plans, he now fixed upon the impregnable fortress of Alamut, 50°. 30" E. long. 36° N. lat., as the central point or pivot of his power. He had previously sent thither a trusty and skilful dai, to invite the inhabitants secretly to swear fealty to Mostansur, and most of them had done so ; and Hassan, partly by stratagem, partly by force, obtained possession of the castle of Alamut, in the year of the Hejira 483, A. D. 1090. " Long experience and extensive knowledge of mankind, profound study of politics and history, had taught the son of Sabah, that an atheistical and immoral system was more calculated to accomplish the ruin than the establishment of dynasties, and the confusion rather than the order of states ; that lawlessness may be the canon of the ruler, but ought never to be the code of the subject; that the many are only held together by the bridle of the law, and that morality and religion are the best sureties of the obedience of nations, and the security of princes." We have seen this maxim acted upon with success in modern times.
Hassan now began to lay the foundation of his own political power, though ostensibly acting as a dai, or nuncio, of the Egyptian khalif. The possession of the castle of Alamut gave him a command over the whole district of Rudbar, in which mountainous district it was situated, and whilst he was busied in framing the basis of his religious and political system, he did not neglect the cultivation of the soil, and the rearing of supplies. The ground-work of his system was the maxim, " Nothing is true and all is allowed ;" which was however, imparted to but few, and concealed under the veil of austere piety. Hitherto, the Ismaelites had only two orders or classes, the dais, or emissaries ; and the refiks, or fellows, who were persons initiated into the secret doctrines. Hassan now found it expedient to add a third, consisting of active agents and blind fanatics, who would become ready tools in the hands of their superiors; these were called fèdivee, or 'self-devoted.'
"Habited in the hues of innocence and blood, (white robes and red turbans, boots, or girdles), and of pure devotion and murder armed with daggers, constantly at the service of the grand-master, they formed his guard, the executioners of his deadly orders, the saunguinary tools of the ambition and revenge of the Order of Assassins." The grand-master was called Sidna,'our lord,' and commonly Sheikh al Jebel, ' Old Man or Supreme Master of the mountain' because the order always possessed themselves of castles in the mountainous regions of Irak, Kuhistan, and Syria. He was neither king nor prince, in the usual sense of the terms ; but had the title of sheikh, which implies both 'elder and lord.'**
The flat part of a country is always commanded by the more mountainous, and the latter by the fortresses scattered through it. To become masters of these by stratagem or force, to awe princes either by fraud or fear, and to arm the murderer's hand against the enemies of the order, was the political maxim of the Assassins. Their internal safety was secured by the strict observance of religious ordinances ; their external, by fortresses and the poinard. From the proper subjects of the order, or the profane, was only expected the fulfilment of the duties of Islamism, even of the most austere, such as refraining from wine and music; from the devoted satelites was demanded blind subjection, and the faithful use of their daggers. The emissaries, or initiated, worked with their heads, and led the arms in execution of the orders of the Sheikh, who, in the centre of his, sovereignty, tranquilly directed, like an animating soul, their hearts and poinards to the accomplishment of his ambitious projects.
Immediately under him, the grand-master, stood the Daikebir, grand recruiters or grand-priors, his lieutenants in the three provinces to which the power of the order extended, namely, Jebal, Kuhistan, and Syria. Beneath them, were the Dai, or religions nuncios, and political emissaries in ordinary, as initiated masters. The fellows (Refik) were those who were advancing to the mastership, through the several grades of initiation into the secret doctrine. The guards of the order, the warriors, were the devoted murderers (Fedavie), and the Lassik (aspirants) seem to have been the novices or lay-brethren. Besides this seven-fold gradation from Sheikh (grand-master), Dailkebir (grand-prior), Dai (master), Reifik (fellows), Fedavie (agents), Lassik (lay brothers), down to the profane or people, there was also another seven-fold gradation of the spiritual hierarchy, who applied themselves exclusively to the before mentioned doctrine of the Ismailis concerning the seven speaking and seven mute Imams, and belonged more properly to the theoretical frame-work of the schism, than to the destruction of political powers.
Sultan Malek soon saw the consequences likely to result from Hassan's, possession of Alamut, and endeavoured to dislodge him. The 'devoted' soon disposed of the vizier, Nisamulk ; so that one of his early friends was the first victim of Hassan's atrocious policy. The sultan, Malek, shortly after died, not without suspicion of poison administered by some of the secret agents of Hassan Sabah.
The Assassins were now generally regarded as without the pale of the law, and the Ismaelites in general were involved in the same sentence, and anathematized in fetwas and judgments against the Mulahid or 'impious.' Retaliation, however, only stimulated the malice, and provoked the revenge, of the new sectaries, and their daggers were directed against personages of the highest rank. The civil wars amongst the Mahomedan princes facilitated the views of Hassan, whose partizans continued to acquire fortresses even in the heart of Persia, and at Ispahan itself.
When the Crusaders invaded Syria, the Assassins were perpetrating their murders, and extending their possesions in that country ; and the historians of the Crusades have recorded some extraordinary details respecting them, which afforded, indeed, till a comparatively late period, the only popular account of these desperadoes.
Hassan Sabah died, A. H. 518 (A. D. 1124), of old age, after a blood-stained reign as grand-master ; of thirty-five years, during which he never once quitted the castle of Alamut, and removed not more than twice from his chamber to the terrace. " Immovable in one spot, and persisting in one plan, he meditated the revolutions of empires by carnage and rebellion, or wrote rules for his order, and the catechism of the secret doctrine of libertinism and impiety." He bequeathed his authority jointly to two of his dais, Kia Busurg-amid, of the castle of Lamin, and Abu Ali, of Kaswin, divided the government between them in such a manner that the latter was invested with the external command and civil administration, and Busurg-amid, as proper grand-master, with the supreme spiritual power and government of the order.
The new Sheikh pursued the same sanguinary policy of his predecessors ; the most illustrious of his enemies fell beneath the daggers of his agents ; † whilst new castles were taken or built. Some of the princes of the East did not scruple to retaliate assassination with assassination. A master and fellow were butchered at the court of Mahmud, the sultan of Irak, after kissing the prince's hand, which was visited by an irruption of the assassins, who carried their murders and devastations to the very gates of Kaswin.
We insert, as a sample of the manner in which the assassinations were effected, the account of that of Moin-ed-din, vizier of Sultan Sandjar. The ruffian entered his service as a groom ; on the vizier going into the stable to inspect his horses, the false groom, who was naked, to obviate any suspicion of his being an assassin, caused a horse to rear, whose bridle he held, and, on pretence of quieting the animal, seized him by the mane, in which he had concealed a dagger, and stabbed the vizier.
Meanwhile, the power and insolence of the order attained its height in Syria; Banias, the ancient Balanea, was the centre of their authority. The Crusaders and the Assassins, both intent upon the same design, the destruction of Islamism, were brought to act in concert. "Hugo de Payens, the first grand-master of the Templars, seems to have been the principal agent in urging Baldwin II., king of Jerusalem, to this strange alliance of the cross and the dagger." In fulfilment of a treaty, the Christians were to obtain, by means of the order, possession of the city of Damascus, in exchange for Tyre. But the design was discovered, and the Crusaders, as well as the Assassins in the city, were severely handled.
Kia Busurg, after he had signalized his career by the assassination of the Khalifa Abu Almansur and Mostarshed, died after a reign of fourteen years, and named his son, Mohammed, grand-master; from this period, the succession became hereditary in the family of Busurg-amid. Mohammed began with the assassination of the Khalif Rashid, successor of Mostarshed ; he fell by the poiniard of two assassins, who had mingled with his retinue.
Meanwhile, the esoteric doctrines of the order were successfully covered, under a veil of piety, from the eyes of the people, who saw, in the numerous victims of the poinard, only the enemies of religion, whom the vengeance of heaven had visited by the arm of a secret tribunal. The superiors of the order did not claim sovereignty in their own name, but in that of the "invisible Imam, " of whom they were the apostles, and who was to appear, at some future period, to assert a dominion over the earth ; whilst they pretended to be strict observers of the rites of Islam.
Kia Mohammed, who had neither the intellect nor the experience of his predecessors, became jealous of his son, Hassan, who was anxious to innovate in the order as a prophet. When he succeeded to the grand-mastership, he determined to preach openly, and in person, the "irreprehensibility of crime." Accordingly, in the year 559 (A.D. 1163), the inhabitants of Rudbar were collected in the castle of Alamut, when Hassan ascended the mimbar, or pulpit, and, in an obscure and perplexing discourse, preached that was the day of "the revolution of the Imam ;" that they were now released from the obligations of the law, and the burthen of all commands and prohibitions. From this day is dated the proper epoch of the promulgation of the mulahid, or 'impious' doctrines ; and, as the Moslems computed their time from the flight of Mahomet, so did the Mulahid from the revelation of the Iman, whom Hassan proclaimed himself to be, and consequently the true successor of the prophet ; pretending he was descended by blood from the Fatimite khalifs. The pulpits how resounded with the name of Hassan instead of that of the Egyptian khalif; and "thus were the bonds of duty and morals at once and openly violated. Undismayed, and with heads erect, vice and crime stalked over the ruins of religion and social order; and murder, which had hitherto felled the destined victims under the mask of blind obedience, and as the executioner of a secret tribunal, now raged in indiscriminate massacres !"
The history of his successors is a series of murders, in which policy appears to have sometimes suspended the dagger of the 'devoted,' when more was expected from the living agency than from the death of the victim. The celebrated Salah ed-din, commonly called Saladin, who had destroyed the Fatimite power in Egypt, was the natural enemy of the order, and consequently their daggers were incessantly directed against him ; he was twice wounded in attempts upon his life.
The Assassins, who at first created and temporised with the Crusaders, a sect of the order actually offering to undergo baptism, at length unsheathed their daggers against the Christian princes. Two Assassins, disguised as monks, stabbed Conrad of Montserrat, Lord of Tyre, in the market-place of that city, and both European and Asiatic historians accuse Richard, King of England, of being the instigator of this action. M. Von Hammer gives, we think, too ready credit to this accusation, the proofs of which, though undoubtedly strong, are at variance with the generous character of the king.
The blind submission of the fedavie, or agents of the order, is strikingly exemplified in an anecdote of this period. In A.D. 1194, Henry, Count of Champagne, passed, on his journey into Armenia, near the territory of the Assassins. The grand-prior invited the count into his fortress, and shewed him several castles and lofty turrets. On each look-out, stood two guards dressed in white; and, in order to convince the count what ready instruments of obedience the order had, the prior gave a signal, and two of the guards threw themselves from the top of the tower, and were dashed to pieces. He offered, if the count desired it, that all the whites should do the same !
Being absolved from all the obligations of Islam, the Assassins rioted in enjoyment ; at each of the central fortresses, in Persia and Syria, at Alamut and Massiat, was a luxurious garden, which realized all the sensual pleasures of the Moslems' paradise. Before a youth was initiated in the Assassins' service, he was invited to the table of the grand-master, or grand-prior, where he was intoxicated with hashish an inebriating electuary prepared from the leaves of hemp, and then carried into the garden, which, on awakening, he took for a Paradise, every thing around him,—the bowers of roses, bubbling fountains, ravishing music and black-eyed maidens,—confirming his delusion. After tasting these enjoyments, and imbibing intoxicating wine from golden goblets, be sunk into a lethargy, promoted by opiates, and was transported again to the table of the superior, who endeavoured to persuade him that, corporeally, he had not left his side, but that spiritually he had been rapt into Paradise, and enjoyed a foretaste of the bliss which awaited those who devoted their lives to the service of the order.
The Baron de Sacy and other Oriental scholars deduce the name of the order, or rather of their agents, called in Arabic, Hashashin, latinized by western writers of the Middle Age into Assassini, and adopted by modern languages, from the intoxicating liquor, hashish, used in the way already mentioned, and also to stimulate the devoted to their dreadful office. Others assert that the term is the plural of hassas, a 'nocturnal thief.'
Jelaleddin, the grandson of Hassan, on obtaining the mastership, abrogated what his father and grandfather had done, and stood forward as the restorer of Islamism, erecting mosques, reestablishing the call to prayers, and inviting around him Imams and readers of the Koran. This recantation M. Von Hammer imputes to refined hypocrisy, though he admits that no murder stains the history of Jelaleddin's reign, which lasted twelve-years. Under his son, Mohammed, the order relapsed into their habits of impiety and crime. He died by poison, and murder began to rage amongst these miscreants themselves. Their crimes, which find almost free scope, for 170 years, at length were closed, in the reign of the last grand-master, Rokn-ed-din Kharshah, by Mangu Khan, the Mongol conquerer, who, at the entreaty of the khalif of Bagdad, sent his brother Hulaku, who marched from Karakurum, in A.D. 1253. By the treachery of an adviser, and the perseverance of Hulaku, Rokn-ed-din was induced to make his submission to the khan. The castles of the Assassins, which surrendered by direction of the captive grand-master, were demolished, and their treasures seized. The fortress of Alamut stood out for a day or two, but at length submitted, and the armies of the order were scattered and annhilated. The weak Rokn-ed-din was suffered to live till the whole of the possessions of the order were surrendered ; when he was put to death A.D. 1257, on the banks of the Oxus. All his family shared the same fate, and Nangu gave orders that the Ismaelites, without distinction of sex or age, should be exterminated ; an order which was executed without compunction. " The crime had been terrible, but no less terrible was the punishment."
The grand-prior of Syria refused to obey the grand-master's orders to submit, and the Mongols were too distant to enforce them; but here we may properly terminate the history of the Assassins, though M. Von Hammer continues to trace the lingering authority of the remnant till their complete annihilation as a power. Remains of the Ismaelites still exist in Persia and Syria, but merely as one of the many sects and heresies of Islamism, without means or desire to attain their former importance.
* The history of the Assassins ; derived from Oriental Sources By the Chevalier Joseph Von Hammer. Translated from the German. By Oswald Charles Wood, M. D. London, 1835, Smith and Elder.
** " In the Annals of the Assassins,' says M. Von Hammer, is found the chronology enumeration of celebrated men of all nations who have fallen victims "
† D'Herbelot erroneously, represents the Assassin as a dynasty of princes.
The Sydney Gazette 1835, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article2201260
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