The Assassins: A Redical Sect in Islam

by Bernard Lewis

  The absence of a manifest Imam, and the adjustments made necessary by the rupture with Cairo, do not seem to have halted or impeded the activities of the Ismailis in Persia. On the contrary, taking advantage of the temporary disarray of the Seljuq state during the last years of the eleventh and the first years of the twelfth century, they extended their activities to new areas.

  One of these actions, the seizure of a castle in the eastern Elburz in 1096, was along the lines of their earlier efforts. Emissaries were sent from Alamut to the region of Damghan, where Hasan had worked before going to Daylam. They were greatly helped by the governor of Damghan, an officer called Muzaffar, a secret convert to Ismailism who had been won over by no less a person than Abd al-Malik ibn Attash. South of Damghan lay the fortress of Girdkuh, well suited by its strength and position to the purposes of the sect, and Muzaffar set to work to get it for them. Still posing as a loyal officer, he persuaded the Seljuq emir who was his superior to request Girdkuh from the Sultan, and to install him there as commandant. The emir and the Sultan both agreed, and Muzaffar duly took possession of Girdkuh. With the authority and probably at the expense of the emir, he repaired and fortified the castle, and stocked it with stores and treasure. Then, when his preparations were complete, he declared himself an Ismaili and a follower of Hasan-i Sabbah. He ruled it for 40 years. The castle of Girdkuh, overlooking the main route between Khurasan and Western Iran, and conveniently near to the centres of Ismaili support in eastern Mazandaran, greatly strengthened the strategic position of the growing Ismaili power.22

  At about the same time they brought off a far bolder coup – the capture of the fortress called Shahdiz on a hill by the great city of Isfahan, the seat of a Seljuq Sultan.23 Ismaili emissaries had been at work in this city for a long time; Abd al-Malik ibn Attash had lived there, but had fled when he was accused of Shi‘ism. The struggles of the new Sultan Berkyaruq against his half-brothers and stepmother gave them a new chance, and they established a reign of terror in Isfahan which ended only when the populace rose against them and massacred them. Similar outbreaks of mob violence against the Ismailis are recorded in other Persian cities.

  A new start was made in Isfahan by Ahmad, the son of Abd al-Malik ibn Attash. At the time of his father’s flight he had been allowed to stay, since he was believed not to share his father’s religious opinions. He was however secretly working for the Ismaili cause. A Persian historian says that he found a post as schoolteacher for the children of the garrison of Shahdiz which consisted, significantly, of Daylami mercenaries. By this means he ingratiated himself with them, and won them over to Ismailism. Thus he was able to gain possession of the fortress. Another, more prosaic version, says that he wormed his way into the confidence of the commandant, became his right-hand man, and succeeded him on his death. A little later the Ismailis gained a second castle near Isfahan, called Khalinjan – whether by capture or cession is not clear. A tale of the kind that the chroniclers delight in telling about the Ismailis has it that a carpenter made friends with the commander and gave a banquet at which he got the whole garrison blind drunk.

  Sultan Berkyaruq, who had succeeded Malikshah in 1092, was fully occupied with his struggle against his half-brother Muhammad Tapar, supported by the latter’s full brother Sanjar. At best, the Sultan had little attention and few forces to spare for the Ismailis; at worst, he or some of his lieutenants were ready to tolerate Ismaili action against his enemies and even perhaps, on occasion, discreetly to seek their help. Thus, Berkyaruq’s representatives in Khurasan enlisted the support of the Ismailis of Quhistan against the rival faction. In the assassins’ roll of honour in the chronicles of Alamut, nearly fifty assassinations are recorded during the reign of Hasan-i Sabbah, beginning with Nizam al-Mulk. More than half of them belong to this period – and some of the victims, it was said, were supporters of Muhammad Tapar and opponents of Berkyaruq.

  In the summer of 1100 Berkyaruq inflicted a defeat on Muhammad Tapar, who had to retreat to Khurasan. Following this victory, the Ismailis became bolder and more self-assertive, and even infiltrated Berkyaruq’s court and army. They won over many of the troops, and threatened those who opposed them with assassination. ‘No commander or officer,’ says the Arabic chronicler, ‘dared to leave his house unprotected; they wore armour under clothes, and even the vizier Abu’l-Hasan wore a mail shirt under his clothes. Sultan Berkyaruq’s high officers asked him for permission to appear before him armed, for fear of attack, and he granted them permission.’24

  The growing menace and insolence of the Ismailis, and the mounting anger of his own supporters at his complacency or worse, at last forced Berkyaruq to take action. In iioi he seems to have reached an agreement with Sanjar, who was still ruling in Khurasan, for combined action against an enemy who threatened both of them. Sanjar sent a large and well-armed expedition, commanded by his senior emir, against the Ismaili areas in Quhistan, where they devastated the countryside and then laid siege to Tabas, the main Ismaili stronghold. Using mangonels, they destroyed most of the walls and were on the point of capturing it, when the Ismailis bribed the emir to raise the siege and go away. They were then able to repair, refortify and reinforce Tabas, to meet the next attack. This came three years later, when the emir led a new army to Quhistan, including, in addition to his own regulars, a number of volunteers. This time their campaign was successful, but curiously inconclusive. The Seljuq troops conquered and destroyed Tabas and other Ismaili castles, pillaged the Ismaili settlements and enslaved some of their inhabitants – and then withdrew, after exacting a pledge from the Ismailis that ‘they would not build a castle, nor buy arms, nor summon any to their faith’.25 There were many who thought these terms far too lenient, and censured Sanjar for accepting them. Sure enough, it was not very long before the Ismailis were once again solidly established in Quhistan.

  In Western Persia and Iraq Berkyaruq made no real effort to attack the centres of Ismaili power. Instead, he tried to appease the anger of his officers and of the populace by permitting or encouraging a massacre of Ismaili sympathizers in Isfahan. Soldiers and citizens joined in the hunt for suspects, who were rounded up, taken to the great square, and killed. A simple accusation was enough, and many innocents, says Ibn al-Athir, died by private vengeance on that day. From Isfahan, the anti-Ismaili action was extended to Iraq, where Ismailis were killed in the camp at Baghdad, and Ismaili books were burnt. One prominent Ismaili, Abu Ibrahim Asadabadi, had been sent to Baghdad by the Sultan himself on an official mission. The Sultan now sent orders for his arrest. When his jailers came to kill him, Asadabadi said: ‘Very well, you have killed me – but can you kill those who are in the castles?’26

  Asadabadi’s taunt was to the point. The Ismailis had suffered a setback; they could no longer count on the acquiescence of Berkyaruq and for a while the fida‘is were comparatively inactive – but their castles remained inviolate, and their reign of terror, though curbed, was by no means at an end. Between 1101 and 1103, the roll of honour records the murder of the Mufti of Isfahan in the old mosque of that city, the prefect of Bayhaq, and the chief of the Karramiyya, a militant anti-Ismaili religious order, in the mosque of Nishapur. The murder of Seljuq officers and officials had, it would seem, for the moment become too difficult – but there was still the task of punishing those civil and religious dignitaries who had dared to oppose the Ismailis. It was during these years that the ruler of Alamut took another important step – the despatch of missionaries to Syria.

  The Ismaili menace to the Seljuq Empire had been contained but not destroyed. After the death of Berkyaruq in 1105 his successor Muhammad Tapar made a new and determined effort to overcome them. ‘When the Sultanate was firmly in the hands of Muhammad and no rival remained to dispute it with him, he had no more urgent task than to seek out and fight the Ismailis and to avenge the Muslims for their oppression and misdeeds. He decided to begin with the castle of Isfahan which was in their hands, for this was the most troublesome and dominated his capital city.
So he led his army against them in person, and laid siege to them on the 6th Sha‘ban 500 [2 April 1107].’27

  The siege and conquest of the castle were delayed by a séries of tricks and manoeuvres, arranged by the Ismailis and their friends. At the very beginning, the departure of the expedition had been postponed for five weeks, as a result of false reports of dangers elsewhere, put about by Ismaili sympathizers in the Sultan’s camp. When the local Ismaili leader Ahmad ibn Attash found himself hard pressed, he gained a breathing spell by starting a religious controversy. In a message to the Sultan, the Ismailis claimed that they were good Muslims, believers in God and the Prophet, observers of the Holy Law. They differed from the Sunnis only concerning the Imamate, and it would therefore be proper for the Sultan to grant them a truce and terms, and accept their allegiance. This initiated a religious debate – between the attackers and the defenders, and between different schools of thought in the attacking camp. Many of the Sultan’s theological advisers were willing to accept the Ismaili argument, but a few stood firm for a more rigorous attitude. ‘Let them answer this question,’ said one of them. ‘“If your Imam were to permit you what the Holy Law forbids, and forbid you what the Holy Law permits, would you obey him?” If they answer yes, their blood is lawful.’ Thanks to the insistence of the rigorists, the debate came to nothing, and the siege continued.

  The Ismailis now tried a different tack, proposing a compromise whereby they would be given another fortress in the vicinity, ‘for the protection of their lives and property from the mob’. Negotiations dragged on, while the Sultan’s vizier himself arranged for supplies of food to be sent into the fortress. This phase ended when an Ismaili assassin wounded but failed to kill one of the Sultan’s emirs who had been particularly outspoken against them. The Sultan now pressed the siege again, and the only hope that remained to the defenders was a negotiated surrender.

  Before long, terms were agreed. Part of the garrison was to be allowed to leave and go, under the Sultan’s protection, to the Ismaili centres at Tabas and near Arrajan. The remainder were to move into one wing of the fortress and abandon the rest to the Sultan. When news was received of the safe arrival of their comrades, they too would come down, and would be permitted to go to Alamut. In due course news was received of the arrival of those who had left, but Ibn Attāsh declined to fulfil his part of the bargain. Taking advantage of the respite, he had concentrated his arms and men – some eighty of them – in the remaining wing of the fortress, and prepared for a fight to the death. They were overcome only when a traitor pointed out that on one wall there was only a row of weapons and armour, arranged to look like men – but no men. In the final assault most of the defenders perished. Ibn Attāsh’s wife threw herself down from the ramparts, decked in her jewels, and was killed; Ibn Attāsh was captured and paraded through the streets of Isfahan. He was then flayed alive – his skin stuffed with straw, his head sent to Baghdad.

  In a victory-letter, published to celebrate this triumph, the Sultan’s secretary gives, in the somewhat pompous style usual in these documents, a Seljuq view of the enemy that they had overcome: In this castle of Shahdiz . . . falsehood was laid and hatched . . . there was Ibn Attāsh, whose reason flew away on the path of error and went astray, who told men that the Way of Bight Guidance was a false track, and took as his guide a book loaded with lies, and gave licence to shed the blood and leave to take the property of the Muslims. . . . Even had they done no more than what they did when first they came to Isfahan – in treacherously tracking and cunningly catching their quarry, and killing them with terrible tortures and a dreadful death, in multiple murder beginning with the notables of the court and the elite of the Ulema, in shedding more than can be counted or measured of inviolable blood, and other offences vexatious to Islam . . . it would have been our duty to fight in defence of religion, and ride both the docile and the headstrong steed in holy warfare against them, even as far as China . . .’28

  China was of course no more than a stylistic flourish – an allusion to a well-known saying of the Prophet. But the Sultan’s attack on the Ismailis extended to both the eastern and western extremities of the Seljuq Empire. In Iraq, an expedition against Takrit, which the Ismailis had held for twelve years, failed to capture the place, but forced the Ismaili commandant to hand it over to local Arab Shi‘ites. In the East, Sanjar was urged to take action against the Ismaili bases in Quhistan, though with what effect is not clear. At about this time, or shortly after, the Ismaili strongholds near Arrajan were overcome, and little more is heard of them in the region of Khuzistan and Fars.

  But the main centre of Ismaili power was in none of these places. It was in the north – in the castles of Rudbar and Girdkuh, and above all in the great fortress of Alamut, the residence of Hasan-i Sabbah. In 1107-8 the Sultan sent a military expedition to Rudbar, under the direction of his vizier Ahmad ibn Nizam al-Mulk. The vizier had his own good reasons for hating the Ismailis. His father, the famous Nizam al-Mulk, had been the first of their great victims; his brother, Fakhr al-Mulk, had fallen to the dagger of an assassin in Nishapur in the previous year.

  The expedition gained some successes and inflicted great hardship on the Ismailis, but failed to achieve its purpose – the capture or destruction of Alamut. ‘He [Ahmad b. Nizam al-Mulk] encompassed Alamut and Ustavand, which is near to it on the banks of the Andij, and they waged war for some time and destroyed the crops. Then, being unable to accomplish more, the army departed from Rudbar. In their castles there was a great famine and the people lived on grass; and it was for this reason that they sent their wives and children elsewhere and he [Hasan-i Sabbah] too sent his wife and daughters to Girdkuh.’29

  Besides sending his own regular troops, the Sultan also tried to raise the immediate neighbours of the Ismailis against them, and prevailed on a local ruler in Gilan to join in the attack – but to no purpose. Later the local ruler, allegedly antagonized by the Sultan’s arrogance, withheld his support. He may have had other reasons. The predicament of the local rulers of Daylam, between their terrible and near neighbours and their powerful but remote overlords, is vividly described by Juvayni: ‘On this account the local rulers, near and far, were exposed to danger, whether their friends or their foes, and would fall into the whirlpool of destruction – their friends, because the kings of Islam would subdue and destroy them and they would suffer “the loss of this world and the next” [Qur’an, xxii, II]; while their foes for fear of his guile and treachery would flee into the cage of defence and precaution and [even so] were mostly killed.“30

  The capture of Alamut by direct assault was clearly impossible. The Sultan therefore tried another method – a war of attrition which, it was hoped, would weaken the Ismailis to the point where they could no longer resist attack. For eight consecutive years“, says Juvayni, ‘the troops came to Rudbar and destroyed the crops, and the two sides were engaged in battle. When it was known that Hasan and his men were left without strength or food, [Sultan Muhammad] at the beginning of the year 511/1117-18, appointed the atabeg Nushtegin Shirgir as commander of the troops and ordered him to lay siege to the castles from then onwards. On the 1st of Safar [4 June 1117] they invested Lamasar and on the nth of Rabi‘ I [13 July] Alamut. Setting up their mangonels they fought strenuously and by Dhu’l–Hijja of that year [March–April 1118] were on the point of taking the castles and freeing mankind from their machinations, when they received news that Sultan Muhammad had died in Isfahan. The troops then dispersed, and the Heretics were left alive and dragged up into their castles all the stores, arms and implements of war assembled by the Sultan’s army.31

  The withdrawal of Shirgir’s army, when on the point of victory, was a profound disappointment. There are some indications that it was not only the news of the Sultan’s death that caused their hurried departure. A sinister role is attributed to one Qiwam al-Din Nasir b. ‘AH al-Dargazini, a vizier in the Seljuq service, and, it was alleged, a secret Ismaili. He had great influence over Sultan Muhammad’s s
on Mahmud who succeeded him as Sultan in Isfahan, and played a role of some importance at his court. He is said to have procured the withdrawal of Shirgir’s army from Alamut, thus rescuing the Ismailis, and to have poisoned the new Sultan’s mind against Shirgir, who was imprisoned and put to death. Later, al-Dargazini was accused of complicity in several other murders.32

  Even while under attack, the assassins were not idle. In 1108-9 they killed Ubayd Allah al-Khatib, a Qadi of Isfahan, and a wholehearted opponent of the Ismailis. The Qadi knew the risks. He wore armour, had a bodyguard, and took precautions – but to no avail. During the Friday prayers in the mosque of Hamadan an assassin got between him and his bodyguard and struck him down. In the same year the Qadi of Nishapur was murdered during the celebrations at the end of Ramadan. In Baghdad, an assassin fell upon Ahmad b. Nizam al-Mulk, no doubt to punish him for leading an expedition to Alamut; the vizier was wounded, but survived. There were other victims too – Sunni divines and jurists, and great dignitaries such as the Kurdish emir Ahmadil, the foster-brother of the Sultan.

  The death of Sultan Muhammad in 1118 was followed by another interval of internecine conflict among the Seljuqs, during which the Assassins were able to recover from the blows which they had suffered and to restore their position in both Quhistan and the North. In time Sanjar, who had controlled the eastern provinces under his brothers Berkyaruq and Mohammad Tapar, managed to establish a precarious primacy among Seljuq rulers. In this period the nature of relations between the Ismailis and the Sunni states begins to change. The ultimate aims of the Ismaili movement are not renounced, but the Ismaili campaign of subversion and terror in the central lands is muted; instead, they concentrate on defending and consolidating the territories which they control, and even acquire some measure of political recognition. At a time when the fragmentation of the Middle East, interrupted by the great Seljuq conquests, was being resumed, the Ismaili principalities and seignories take their place in the pattern of small independent states, and even participate in local alliances and rivalries.