Titans of History

HASSAN AL-SABBAH AND THE ASSASSINS

1056–1124

No man ever escaped when the Sheikh of the Mountain desired his death.

Marco Polo

“The Old Man of the Mountain,” Hassan al-Sabbah, was arguably the forerunner of modern jihadist terrorism, a medieval Osama bin Laden (though unlike him, a Shiite), but he was also a figure of learning and mystique, a charismatic military and religious leader who achieved power for his sect far beyond its resources. His fiefdom of Alamut, high in the Elburz Mountains of northern Iran, was the base of the mysterious but deadly sect known as the Assassins. Marco Polo, who visited the area on his way back from China, told of a beautiful garden in which a powerful sheikh trained fanatical killers to become his loyal followers with hashish-fueled promises of paradise. These same men would then do all that the Old Man asked—even kill themselves, if that was what he desired.

Hassan al-Sabbah was born in the Persian city of Qom, becoming an admired scholar of Shia Islam. While still a youth, his family moved to the town of Rayy, and it was there that he resolved to devote his life to the Shia Ismaili sect.

Hassan carved an early career at the court of the Seljuq Turks, a Sunni dynasty whose empire controlled much of Iran, Mesopotamia, Syria and Palestine between the 11th and 14th centuries. In the service of the Seljuq sultan, Hassan rose to become a senior adviser but ended up causing offense and was banished, an insult he never forgot.

Hassan roamed around the Middle East until he arrived in Egypt in about 1078. Cairo was then the capital of the Fatimid empire whose caliphs were Shia Ismailis. He remained there for some three years, continuing his studies and establishing himself as a religious leader of the Nizariya faction. But when he and his faction lost out in a political struggle and were driven out of Cairo, he led his sect on a new path. He and his followers established or fortified a series of remote strongholds across the Middle East, from Lebanon to Iraq, and from Syria to Iran. He returned to his native Iran, taking over Alamut castle in the Elburz Mountains. It would remain his aerie and capital until his death.

There Hassan set about building a militia of armed followers who could both defend his “kingdom,” proselytize on behalf of his Shia sect and destroy the enemies of true Islam. Foreigners claimed that through the profligate use of the psychoactive drug hashish, Hassan created his “Hashishim”—hence the word assassins—to kill “impious usurpers” and Sunni leaders. (He remained nominally loyal to the Fatimid caliphs in Cairo, but in reality he became a remarkable independent political force, feared and loathed by all the great powers of the Middle East.) His control was overwhelmingly through faith, will and charisma. His adepts called themselves the New Doctrine, while his feared fighters were the Fedayeen—or the Holy Killers, admired by some, feared by all; other Muslims sometimes called them Batini—seekers after esoteric knowledge. Their favorite weapon was the dagger, sometimes poisoned.

On discovering one of his followers playing the flute, he had the man banished. He even had his own son executed for drinking wine. Those who came to serve Hassan were indoctrinated, trained and equipped before being sent forth to carry out their master’s orders. Integral to this process was the beautiful garden he had built, described by Marco Polo as the “largest and finest” the world had ever seen. The stories of the Assassins are partly mythical. It is impossible to confirm Marco Polo’s claims that within its walls conduits had been cut through which ran wine, milk, honey and water, while groups of beautiful women cavorted. The effect was such as to make people believe that this was indeed Paradise. Marco Polo described how Hassan manipulated young men into being his blindly obedient followers:

The Old Man … had a potion given them, as a result of which they straightway fell asleep; then he had them taken up and put into the garden, and then awaked. When they awoke, they … saw all the things that I have told you, and so believed that they were really in Paradise. And the ladies and damsels remained with them all day, playing music and singing and making excellent cheer; and the young men had their pleasure of them. So these youths had all they could desire, and would never have left the place of their own free will.

At that point, however, they were re-drugged, removed from the garden and returned to Hassan’s castle. The covenant he then offered them was simple: they could return to paradise, of which he was the guardian, provided they did everything that he asked.

However it was gained, Hassan won the unswerving loyalty of his sect of fanatical believers and worked to foment uprisings against the Seljuq sultans and Abbasid caliphs, both Sunnis, as well as the infidel crusaders. The Assassins murdered Seljuq and Abbasid officials and sometimes Fatimids too. They assassinated the crusader princes Raymond II, count of Tripoli, and Conrad of Montferrat, whose murder may have been ordered by Richard I of England (Hassan was known sometimes to cooperate with crusaders). Much later, an Assassin almost succeeded in killing Prince Edward of England, who later became Edward I, with a poisoned dagger, but he survived. It was said that the Knights Hospitallers hired Assassins to murder various of their opponents. Other Muslim leaders were outraged by the power of the Old Man of the Mountain and often tried to crush him—but he was a dangerous opponent. When the sultan Saladin resolved to destroy the Assassins, he found a dagger under his pillow, and took the warning. The great Middle Eastern princes attacked the Assassins, but each time they survived as an idiosyncratic outlaw state.

The sheikh died of natural causes in 1124. He was replaced by his henchman Kya Bozorg-Ummid, who created an Assassin dynasty when he was succeeded by his son. But the Assassins were finally destroyed by the Mongol Khan and empire-builder Hulugu, Genghis Khan’s grandson, who stormed Alamut in 1256. The new Mamluk ruler of Egypt, Sultan Baybars, wiped out the last Assassin strongholds in Syria in 1273.