The Assassins: A Redical Sect in Islam

by Bernard Lewis

  The role of honour for the reign of Muhammad lists in all fourteen assassinations. Besides the Caliph, the most notable victim was the Seljuq Sultan Da’ud, murdered by four Syrian assassins in Tabriz in 1143. It was alleged that the murderers had been sent by Zangi, the ruler of Mosul, who was expanding his realm into Syria and feared that Da’ud might be sent to replace him. It is certainly curious that a murder in North Western Persia should have been arranged from Syria and not from nearby Alamut. Other victims include an emir at Sanjar’s court and one of his associates, a prince of the house of the Khorazmshahs, local rulers in Georgia (?) and Mazandaran, a vizier, and the Qadis of Quhistan, Tiflis and Hamadan, who had authorized or instigated the killing of Ismailis.

  It was a meagre haul compared with the great days of Hasan-i Sabbah, and reflects the growing concern of the Ismailis with local and territorial problems. In the Ismaili chronicle these take pride of place. The great affairs of the Empire are hardly mentioned; instead, there are circumstantial accounts of local conflicts with neighbouring rulers, embellished with lists of the cows, sheep, asses and other booty taken. The Ismailis more than held their own in a séries of raids and counter-raids between Rudbar and Qazvin, and in 1143 repelled an attack by Sultan Mahmud on

  Alamut. They managed to gain or build some new fortresses in the Caspian districts, and are even reported to have extended their activities to two new areas – in Georgia, where they raided and carried on propaganda, and in present-day Afghanistan, where they were invited by the ruler, for reasons of his own, to send a mission. On his death in 1161 both missionaries and converts were put to death by his successor.

  Two enemies were specially persistent – the ruler of Mazandaran, and Abbas, the Seljuq governor of Rayy, who organized a massacre of Ismailis in that city and attacked the Ismaili territories. Both are said to have built towers of Ismaili skulls. In 1146 or 1147 Abbas was murdered by Sultan Mas’ud while on a visit to Baghdad, ‘on a sign’, says the Ismaili chronicler, ‘from Sultan Sanjar’.12 His head was sent to Khurasan. There are several such indications that Sanjar and the Ismailis are on the same side, though at other times they came into conflict, as for example when Sanjar supported an attempt to restore the Sunni faith in one of the Ismaili centres in Quhistan. There as elsewhere, the issues involved are usually local and territorial. It is noteworthy that in the other Ismaili castles and seignories, besides Alamut, leadership descended from father to son, and often the conflicts in which they are engaged are purely dynastic.

  The passion seemed to have gone out of Ismailism. In the virtual stalemate and tacit mutual acceptance between the Ismaili principalities and the Sunni monarchies, the great struggle to overthrow the old order and establish a new millennium, in the name of the hidden Imam, had dwindled into border-squabbles and cattle-raids. The castle strongholds, originally intended to be the spearheads of a great onslaught on the Sunni Empire, had become the centres of local sectarian dynasties, of a type not uncommon in Islamic history. The Ismailis even had their own mint, and struck their own coins. True, the fida‘is still practised murder, but this was not peculiar to them, and in any case hardly sufficed to fire the hopes of the faithful.

  Among them there were still some who harked back to the glorious days of Hasan-i Sabbah – to the dedication and adventure of his early struggles, and the religious faith that inspired them. They found a leader in Hasan, the son and heir apparent of the lord of Alamut, Muhammad. His interest began early, ‘When he had nearly approached the age of discretion he conceived the desire to study and examine the teachings of Hasan-i Sabbah and his own forefathers; and . . . he came to excel in the exposition of their creed . . . With . . . the eloquence of his words he won over the greater part of that people. Now his father being altogether lacking in that art, his son . . . appeared a great scholar beside him, and therefore . . . the vulgar sought to follow his lead. And not having heard the like discourses from his father they began to think that here was the Imam that had been promised by Hasan-i Sabbah. The people’s attachment to him increased and they made haste to follow him as their leader.’

  Muhammad did not like this at all. A conservative in his Ismailism, ‘he was rigid in his observance of the principles laid down by his father and Hasan[-i Sabbah] with regard to the conduct of propaganda on behalf of the Imam and the outward observance of Muslim practices; and he considered his son’s behaviour to be inconsistent with those principles. He therefore denounced him roundly and having assembled the people spoke as follows: “This Hasan is my son, and I am not the Imam but one of his da‘is. Whoever listens to these words and believes them is an infidel and atheist.” And on these grounds he punished some who had believed in his son’s Imamate with all manner of tortures and torments, and on one occasion put 250 persons to death on Alamut and then binding their corpses on the backs of 250 others condemned on the same charge he expelled these latter from the castle. And in this way they were discouraged and suppressed.’13 Hasan bided his time, and managed to dispel his father’s suspicions. On Muhammad’s death in 1162 he succeeded him without opposition. He was then about 35 years old.

  Hasan’s rule was at first uneventful, marked only by a certain relaxation in the rigorous enforcement of the Holy Law that had previously been maintained at Alamut. Then, two and a half years after his accession, in the middle of the fasting month of Ramadan, he proclaimed the millennium.

  Ismaili accounts of what happened are preserved in the later literature of the sect and also, in a somewhat modified form, in the Persian chronicles written after the fall of Alamut. They tell a curious tale. On the 17th day of the month of Ramadan, of the year 559 [8 August 1164], under the ascendancy of Virgo and when the sun was in Cancer, Hasan ordered the erection of a pulpit in the courtyard of Alamut, facing towards the west, with four great banners of four colours, white, red, yellow, and green, at the four corners. The people from the different regions, whom he had previously summoned to Alamut, were assembled in the courtyard – those from the East on the right side, those from the West on the left side, and those from the North, from Rudbar and Daylam, in front, facing the pulpit. As the pulpit faced west the congregants had their backs towards Mecca. ‘Then,’ says an Ismaili tract, ‘towards noon, the Lord [Hasan], on his mention be peace, wearing a white garment and a white turban, came down from the castle, approached the pulpit from the right side, and in the most perfect manner ascended it. Three times he uttered greetings, first to the Daylamis, then to those on the right, then to those on the left. In a moment he sat down, and then rose up again and, holding his sword, spoke in a loud voice.’ Addressing himself to ‘the inhabitants of the worlds,jinn, men, and angels’, he announced that a message had come to him from the hidden Imam, with new guidance. ‘The Imam of our time has sent you his blessing and his compassion, and has called you his special chosen servants. He has freed you from the burden of the rules of Holy Law, and has brought you to the Resurrection.’ In addition, the Imam named Hasan, the son of Muhammad, the son of Buzurgumid, as ‘our vicar, da‘i and proof. Our party must obey and follow him both in religious and worldly matters, recognize his commands as binding, and know that his word is our word.’14 When he had completed his address, Hasan stepped down from the pulpit, and performed two prostrations of the festival prayer. Then, a table having been laid, he invited them to break their fast, join in a banquet, and make merry. Messengers were sent to carry the glad tidings to east and west. In Quhistan, the chief of the fortress of Mu’minabad repeated the ceremony of Alamut, and proclaimed himself as the vicar of Hasan, from a pulpit facing the wrong way; ‘And that day on which these ignominies were divulged and these evils proclaimed in that nest of heretics, Mu’minabad, that assembly played harp and rebeck and openly drank wine upon the very steps of that pulpit and within its precincts.’15 In Syria too the word was received, and the faithful celebrated the end of the law.

  The solemn and ritual violation of the law – the congregants with their backs towards Mecca, the afterno
on banquet in the midst of the fast – mark the culmination of a millenarian and antinomian tendency which is recurrent in Islam, and has obvious parallels in Christendom. The law has served its purpose, and its reign is ended; the secrets are revealed, the grace of the Imam prevails. By making the faithful his chosen personal servants, he has preserved them from sin; by proclaiming the Resurrection, he has saved them from death, and brought them, living, to that spiritual Paradise which is the knowledge of the Truth, and the contemplation of the Divine Essence. ‘Now the essence of this futile creed . . . was that following the Philosophers they spoke of the world as being uncreated and Time as unlimited and the Resurrection as spiritual. And they explained paradise and hell . . . in such a way as to give a spiritual meaning to these concepts. And then on the basis of this they said that the Resurrection is when men shall come to God and the mysteries and truths of all Creation be revealed, and acts of obedience abolished, for in this world all is action and there is no reckoning, but in the world to come all is reckoning and there is no action. And this is the spiritual [Resurrection] and the Resurrection promised and awaited in all religions and creeds is this, which was revealed by Hasan. And as a consequence hereof men have been relieved of the duties imposed by the Shari’a because in this period of the Resurrection they must turn in every sense towards God and abandon the rites of religious law and established habits of worship. It was laid down in the Shari‘a that men must worship God five times a day and be with Him. That charge was only formal, but now in [the days of] the Resurrection they must always be with God in their hearts and keep the faces of their souls constantly turned in the direction of the Divine Presence for such is true prayer.’16

  The new dispensation brought an important change in the status of the Lord of Alamut. In the sermon in the castle courtyard, he is declared to be the vicar of the Imam and the Living Proof; as the bringer of the Resurrection (qiyāma), he is the Qā’im a dominating figure in Ismaili eschatology. According to Rashid al-Din, after his public manifestation Hasan circulated writings in which he said that, while outwardly he was known as the grandson of Buzurgumid, in the esoteric reality he was the Imam of the time, and the son of the previous Imam, of the line of Nizar. It is possible that, as some have argued, Hasan was not claiming physical descent from Nizar, which in the age of the Resurrection had ceased to signify, but a kind of spiritual filiation. There are indeed precedents in early Islamic messianic movements for such claims to spiritual or adoptive descent from the house of the Prophet. The later Ismaili tradition is, however, unanimous in asserting that Hasan and his descendants were of the true line of Nizar, though there are different versions as to how the substitution took place. Hasan himself is held in special veneration, and is always named as Hasan ala dhikrihi’l-salam – Hasan, ‘on his mention be peace’.

  Most of the Ismailis readily accepted the new dispensation. There were some, however, who refused to be delivered from the yoke of the law, and against them Hasan used the severest punishments to impose freedom. ‘Hasan maintained both by implication and by clear declaration, that just as in the time of the Law if a man did not obey and worship but followed the rule of the Resurrection that obedience and worship are spiritual, he was punished and stoned and put to death, so now in the time of the Resurrection if a man complied with the letter of the Law and persisted in physical worship and rites, it was obligatory that he be chastised and stoned and put to death.’17

  Among the recusants was Hasan’s brother-in-law, the scion of a noble Daylami house. He, according to Juvayni, was one of ‘those to the nostrils of whose hearts there still came some scent of piety and religion . . . This man was unable to endure the propagation of those shameful errors. God have mercy on him and reward him for the goodness of his intention! On Sunday the 6th Rabi‘ I, 561 [9 January 1166] he stabbed the seducer. Hasan in the castle of Lamasar and he departed from this world “unto God’s burning fire“.’18

  Hasan was succeeded by his nineteen-year old son Muhammad, who proceeded to confirm that his father and therefore he himself were descendants of Nizar, and Imams. He is said to have been a prolific writer, and during his long reign the doctrine of the Resurrection was developed and elaborated – but it seems to have made remarkably little impact on the outside world. It is significant that the whole episode of the Resurrection at Alamut passed unmentioned in contemporary Sunni historiography, and only became known after the destruction of Alamut, when the writings of the Ismailis came into the hands of Sunni scholars.

  Politically too, the reign of Muhammad II was uneventful. The men of Alamut continued to raid their neighbours, and the fida‘is killed a vizier of the Caliph in Baghdad, but little else of significance happened. A story told by Rashid al-Din and other authors relates to the great Sunni theologian Fakhr al-Din Razi. In his lectures to theological students in Rayy, Fakhr al-Din made a special point of refuting and reviling the Ismailis. Hearing of this, the lord of Alamut decided to put a stop to it and sent a fida‘i to Rayy. There he enrolled himself as a student, and attended Fakhr al-Din’s lectures daily for seven months, until he found an opportunity of seeing his teacher alone in his room, on the pretext of discussing a knotty problem. The fida‘i at once drew a knife, and menaced the theologian with it. ‘Fakhr al-Din jumped aside, and said: “Man, what do you want?” The fida‘i replied: “I want to slit your honour’s belly from the breast to the navel, because you have cursed us from the pulpit.’” After a tussle, the fida‘i threw Fakhr al-Din to the ground, and sat on his chest. The terrified theologian promised to repent, and to refrain from such attacks in the future. The fida‘i allowed himself to be persuaded, and, accepting a solemn undertaking from Fakhr al-Din to mend his ways, produced a bag containing 365 gold dinars. This, and a similar amount every year, would be paid to him in return for his compliance. Thenceforth, in his lectures on the sects of Islam, Fakhr al-Din took good care to avoid expressions offensive to the Ismailis. One of his students, noting this change, asked the reason for it. The professor replied: It is not advisable to curse the Ismailis, for they have both weighty and trenchant arguments.’19 The story has the appearance of a fable – but it may be noted that in this writings Fakhr al-Din Razi, while not accepting the doctrines of the Ismailis, condemns one Sunni theologian for trying to refute them with fanatical and ill-informed abuse, and praises another for correctly citing an Ismaili text.20 Razi’s point, of course, is not that the Ismailis are right, but that theological controversy must be based on correct information and an intelligent understanding of an opponent’s point of view.

  In the meantime great political changes had been taking place in the eastern lands of Islam. The Seljuq Great Sultanate, which for a time had restored the unity and reaffirmed the purpose of Sunni Islam, was disintegrating; in its place a new pattern of principalities emerged, founded by Seljuqid princes or officers, and, to an increasing extent, by the chiefs of nomadic Turkoman tribes whom successive waves of Turkish migration had brought from Central Asia into the Middle East. The Turkish expansion had for the moment reached its territorial limits; the Turkish imperial structure of the Seljuqs had fallen in ruins – but Turkish penetration and colonization continued, deepening and strengthening the conquest that had already been achieved. Changes of regime brought no change of substance; the successor princes found it simpler to maintain the political, military and administrative practices of the Seljuqs, including their firm commitment to religious orthodoxy. Here and there, where Turks were few, local groups, of Persian, Kurdish or Arab origin, raised their heads and achieved some measure of independence – but in the main the Turkish chiefs, however divided by political allegiance, pursued their common aim of displacing and supplanting the old, native lords. In this they were largely successful.

  Towards the end of the twelfth century a new power emerged in the East. South of the Aral Sea lay the land of Khorazm, seat of an old and prosperous civilization, protected by a cordon of deserts from the convulsions that were shaking the neighbouring cou
ntries. Like most of Central Asia, it had been conquered and colonized by Turks; its ruling dynasty was descended from a Turkish slave sent there as governor by the Seljuq Great Sultan Malikshah. These rulers had prospered, and had signalized their identification with the country which they ruled by adopting the old native title of Khorazmshah, Shah of Khorazm – at first as vassals of the great powers, then as independent rulers. Amid general chaos the prosperous and well-armed Khorazmian monarchy was a haven of security; it was not long before the monarch felt obliged to extend the benefits of his rule to other lands and peoples. In about 1190 the Khorazmshah Tekish occupied Khurasan, thus becoming master of eastern Iran, and a major power in Islam. The Caliph al-Nasir in Baghdad, hard-pressed by the last of the Seljuqs of Iran, Tughrul 11, appealed to Tekish for help and thus provided the occasion for the Khorazmian armies to advance westwards, to the conquest of Rayy and Hamadan. It was at Rayy that, in 1194, the last of the Seljuqs was defeated and killed.

  During the century and a half since the coming of the Seljuqs, the great Sultanate which they had established had become an accepted part of the Islamic pattern of authority. The death of the last Seljuq had thus created a vacancy – and the triumphant Khorazmshah was the obvious person to fill it. Tekish now sent a message to the Caliph al-Nasir, demanding that he accept and recognize him as Sultan in Baghdad. Al-Nasir, however, had other ideas – and Tekish, who had hoped to grow from the Caliph’s ally to the Caliph’s protector, found that instead he had become the Caliph’s enemy.

  Since the accession of al-Nasir in 1180, the Abbasid Caliphate had enjoyed a striking revival. For some three centuries the Caliphs had been little more than puppets – the nominal heads of Sunni Islam, but effectively under the domination of the military rulers, the emirs and later the sultans. The decay of Seljuq power in Iraq created an opportunity that al-Nasir was quick to seize. His aim was two-fold; to restore the religious unity of Islam and the moral authority of the Caliph as its head, and to establish a Caliphal principality in Iraq under the effective rule of the Caliph – a sort of state of the Church, free from any outside control or influence, to serve as the base for his religious policies. The second, and limited objective he pursued by political and military action, against Tughrul and later against Tekish; the first – and probably main – objective of an Islamic restoration was furthered by a séries of religious, social and educational initiatives, including approaches to both the Twelver Shi‘a and the Ismailis. With the second of these he achieved a surprising measure of success.