ASSASSIN

Arabic Hashshash, plural Hashshashin in Middle Eastern and Asian history, any member of the Nizari Isma'ilites, a religiopolitical Islamic sect dating from the 11th to the 13th century and known, in its early years, for murdering its enemies as a religious duty. The Arabic name means hashish smoker, referring to the Assassins' alleged practice of taking hashish to induce ecstatic visions of paradise before setting out to face martyrdom. The historical existence of this practice, however, is doubtful. The stories that were told by Marco Polo and other travelers about the gardens of paradise into which the drugged devotees were introduced to receive a foretaste of eternal bliss are not confirmed by any known Isma'ilite source. The Assassins were a product of dynastic strife among the Fatimids, who were the heads of the Shi'ite Isma'ilite movement and had set up a rival caliphate in Egypt in opposition to that of the 'Abbasids in Baghdad. After the death of the Fatimid caliph al-Mustansir (1094), Hasan-e Sabbah and other Isma'ilites in Iran refused to recognize the new Fatimid caliph in Cairo and transferred their allegiance to his deposed elder brother, Nizar, and the latter's descendants. There thus grew up the sect of the Nizari Isma'ilites, who were at odds with the Fatimid caliphs in Cairo and were also deeply hostile to the 'Abbasids. The Nizaris made many changes in Isma'ilite doctrine, the most significant, from the point of view of the outside world, being the adoption of terrorism as a sacred religious duty. The open history of the Assassins began in 1090, when Hasan and his allies captured the hill fortress of Alamut near Kazvin, Iran. From this centre, by the end of the 11th century, Hasan, as grand master or leader of the sect, commanded a chain of strongholds all over Iran and Iraq, a network of propagandists, a corps of devoted terrorists, and an unknown number of agents in enemy camps and cities. The Seljuq sultanate's attempts to capture Alamut failed, and soon the Assassins were claiming many victims among the generals and statesmen of the 'Abbasid caliphate, including two caliphs. In the early 12th century the Assassins extended their activities to Syria, where the expansion of Seljuq rule had created a favourable climate for terrorist activities by extremist elements among the local Shi'ite minority. After a period of preparation, the Assassins seized a group of castles in the An-Nusayriyah Mountains, the most important of which was Masyaf. From this fortress the Syrian grand master, the legendary Rashid ad-Din as-Sinan, ruled virtually independently of Assassin headquarters at Alamut. Rashid and his successor chiefs were known as the shaykh al-jabal (Arabic: mountain chief), which was mistranslated by the crusaders as the Old Man of the Mountain. Assassin power came to an end as the Mongols under Hleg captured Assassin castles in Iran one by one until in 1256 Alamut itself fell. The Syrian castles were gradually subjugated by the Mamluk sultan Baybars I and placed under Mamluk governors. Henceforth the sect stagnated as a minor heresy. Its followers are still to be found in Syria, Iran, and Central and South Asia, with the largest group in India and Pakistan, where they are known as Khojas and owe allegiance to the Aga Khan. The term assassin was brought by the crusaders from Syria to Europe, where it acquired its present meaning of one who murders a politically important person either for hire or from fanatical motives. Additional reading Marshall G.S. Hodgson, The Order of Assassins (1955, reprinted 1980); Bernard Lewis, The Assassins: A Radical Sect in Islam (1967, reissued 1987); Farhad Daftary, The Assassin Legends: Myths of the Isma'ilis (1994).