The Assassins (8 page)

With his followers now installed in the castle, Hasan left Qazvin for the neighbourhood of Alamut, where he stayed for some time in concealment. Then, on Wednesday, 4 September io9o, he was brought secretly into the castle. For a while he remained in the castle in disguise, but in due course his identity became known. The former owner realized what had happened, but could do nothing to stop or change it. Hasan allowed him to leave, and, according to a story related by the Persian chroniclers, gave him a draft for 3,000 gold dinars, in payment for his castle.x0

Hasan-i Sabbah was now firmly established as master of Alamut. From the time of his entry until his death thirty five years later, he never once went down from the rock, and only twice left the house in which he lived. On both occasions he went up on the roof. `The rest of the time until his death,' says Rashid al-Din, he passed inside the house where he lived; he was occupied with reading books, committing the words of the da'wa to writing, and administering the affairs of his realm, and he lived an ascetic, abstemious, and pious life."

At first, his task was twofold - to win converts, and to gain possession of more castles. From Alamut he sent missionaries and agents in various directions, to accomplish both purposes. An obvious objective was control of the immediate neighbourhood of his headquarters, the district called Rudbar, river-bed, after the river Shah Rud which flows through it. In these remote but fertile mountain valleys, an older way of life persisted, unaffected by the changes that had been taking place further south. There was no real town in Rudbar, and no town-based military or political authority. The people lived in villages, and gave their allegiance to a local gentry who lived in castles. It was among these, as well as among the villagers, that the Ismailis found support. `Hasan exerted every effort,' says Juvayni, `to capture the places adjacent to Alamut or that vicinity. Where possible he won them over by the tricks of his propaganda while such places as were unaffected by his blandishments he seized with slaughter, ravishment, pillage, bloodshed, and war. He took such castles as he could and wherever he found a suitable rock he built a castle upon it.'12 An important success was the capture by assault of the castle of Lamasar in Io96 or I I02.- 3 The attackers were led by Kiya Burzurgumid, who remained there as commandant for twenty years. Strategically situated on a rounded rock overlooking the Shah Rud, this castle confirmed the power of the Ismailis in the whole Rudbar area.

Far away to the south-east lay the barren, mountainous country of Quhistan, near the present border between Persia and Afghanistan. Its population lived in a scattered and isolated group of oases surrounded on all sides by the great salt desert of the central plateau. In early Islamic times, this region had been one of the last refuges of Zoroastrianism; converted to Islam, it became a resort of Shiite and other religious dissidents and, later, of the Ismailis. In io9i-2 Hasan-i Sabbah sent a missionary to Quhistan, to mobilize and extend Ismaili support. His choice fell on Husayn Qa'ini, an able da'i who had played some role in the conversion of Alamut, and who was himself of Quhistani origin. His mission was immediately successful. The population of Quhistan were chafing under Seljuq rule; an oppressive Seljuq officer, it is said, brought matters to a head by demanding the sister of the highly respected local lord, who thereupon defected to the Ismailis. What happened in Quhistan was more than secret subversion, more than the seizure of castles; it assumed almost the character of a popular rising, a movement for independence from alien, military domination. In many parts of the province the Ismailis rose in open revolt, and seized control of several of the main towns - Zuzan, Qa'in, Tabas, Tun, and others. In eastern Quhistan, as in Rudbar, they succeeded in creating what was virtually a territorial state.14

Mountainous areas had obvious advantages for the Ismaili strategy of expansion. Another such area lay in South Western Persia, in the region between Khuzistan and Fars. There too there were the necessary conditions for success - difficult country, a turbulent and disaffected population, a strong local tradition of Shiite and Ismaili loyalties. The Ismaili leader in this area was Abu Hamza, a shoemaker from Arrajan who had been to Egypt and returned as a Fatimid da'i. He seized two castles, a few miles from Arrajan, and used them as a base for further activity., 5

While some Ismaili missionaries were acquiring and consolidating positions of strength in remote outposts, others were carrying their religious propaganda into the main centres of Sunni orthodoxy and Seljuq power. It was they who brought about the first bloodshed involving Ismaili agents and the Seljuq authorities. The first incident occurred in a small town called Sava, in the northern plateau not far from Rayy and Qumm, perhaps even before the capture of Alamut. A group of eighteen Ismailis was arrested by the police-chief for joining together in separate prayers. This was their first such meeting, and after questioning they were allowed to go free. They then tried to convert a muezzin from Sava who was living in Isfahan. He refused to respond to their appeal and the Ismailis, fearing that he would denounce them, murdered him. He, says the Arabic historian Ibn al-Athir, was their first victim, and his was the first blood that they shed. News of this murder reached the vizier, Nizam al-Mulk, who personally gave orders for the execution of the ringleader. The man accused was a carpenter called Tahir, the son of a preacher who had held various religious offices, and had been lynched by a mob in Kerman as a suspected Ismaili. Tahir was executed and made an example of, and his body dragged through the market-place. He, says Ibn al-Athir, was the first Ismaili to be executed.16

In io92 the Seljuqs made their first effort to deal with the Ismaili menace by military force. Malikshah, the Great Sultan, or supreme overlord of the Seljuq rulers and princes, sent two expeditions, one against Alamut, the other against Quhistan. Both were repelled, the former with the help of supporters and sympathizers from Rudbar and from Qazvin itself. Juvayni cites an Ismaili account of the victory: `Sultan Malikshah, in the beginning of the year 485/io92, dispatched an emir called Arslantash to expel and extirpate Hasan-i Sabbah and all his followers. This emir sat down before Alamut in Jumada i of the said year [JuneJuly, 1092]. At that time Hasan-i Sabbah had with him on Alamut no more than 6o or 7o men; and they had but few stores. They lived on the little they had, a bare subsistence, and kept up the battle with the besiegers. Now one of Hasan's dais, a man called Dihdar Bu-Ali, who came from Zuvara and Ardistan, had his residence in Qazvin, some of the inhabitants of which were his converts; as likewise in the district of Talaqan and Kuh-i Bara and the district of Rayy many people believed in the Sabbahian propaganda; and they all resorted to the man who had settled in Qazvin. Hasan-i Sabbah now appealed to Bu-Ali for help, and he stirred up a host of people from Kuh-i Bara and Talaqan and likewise sent arms and implements of war from Qazvin. Some 300 of these men came to the aid of Hasan-i Sabbah. They threw themselves into Alamut and then with the assistance of the garrison and the support of some of the people of Rudbar, who were in league with them outside the castle, one night at the end of Sha'ban of that year [September-October, 1092], they made a surprise attack upon the army of Arslantash. By divine preordination the army was put to flight and leaving Alamut returned to Malikshah.'I7 The siege of the Ismaili centre in Quhistan was raised when news was received of the death of the Sultan in November 1092.

Meanwhile the Ismailis had achieved their first great success in the art that was to take its name from them - the art of assassination. Their chosen victim was the all-powerful vizier himself, whose efforts to `stem the pus of sedition and excise the virus of inaction' had made him their most dangerous enemy. Hasan-i Sabbah laid his plans carefully: `Our Master', says Rashid al-Din, following - and no doubt adjusting - his Ismaili source, `laid snares and traps so as to catch first of all such fine game as Nizam al-Mulk in the net of death and perdition, and by this act his fame and renown became great. With the jugglery of deceit and the trickery of untruth, with guileful preparations and specious obfuscations, he laid the foundations of the fida'is, and he said: "who of you will rid this state of the evil of Nizam al-Mulk Tusi?" A man called Bu Tahir Arrani laid the hand of acceptance on his breast, and, following the path of error by which he hoped to attain the bliss of the world-to-come, on the night of Friday, the 12th of Ramadan of the year 485 [i6 October iota], in the district of Nihavand at the stage of Sahna, he came in the guise of a Sufi to the litter of Nizam al-Mulk, who was being borne from the audience-place to the tent of his women, and struck him with a knife, and by that blow he suffered martyrdom. Nizam al-Mulk was the first man whom the fida'is killed. Our Master, upon him what he deserves, said: "The killing of this devil is the beginning of bliss."'"

It was the first of a long series of such attacks which, in a calculated war of terror, brought sudden death to sovereigns, princes, generals, governors, and even divines who had condemned Ismaili doctrines and authorized the suppression of those who professed them. `To kill them,' said one such pious opponent, `is more lawful than rainwater. It is the duty of Sultans and kings to conquer and kill them, and cleanse the surface of the earth from their pollution. It is not right to associate or form friendships with them, nor to eat meat butchered by them, nor to enter into marriage with them. To shed the blood of a heretic is more meritorious than to kill seventy Greek infidels."9

For their victims, the assassins were criminal fanatics, engaged in a murderous conspiracy against religion and society. For the Ismailis, they were a corps d'elite in the war against the enemies of the Imam; by striking down oppressors and usurpers, they gave the ultimate proof of their faith and loyalty, and earned immediate and eternal bliss. The Ismailis themselves used the term fcda'i, roughly devotee, of the actual murderer, and an interesting Ismaili poem has been preserved praising their courage, loyalty, and selfless devotion.- In the local Ismaili chronicles of Alamut, cited by Rashid al-Din and Kashani, there is a roll of honour of assassinations, giving the names of the victims and of their pious executioners.

In form, the Ismailis were a secret society, with a system of oaths and initiations and a graded hierarchy of rank and knowledge. The secrets were well kept, and information about them is fragmentary and confused. Orthodox polemists depict the Ismailis as a band of deceitful nihilists who misled their dupes through successive stages of degradation, in the last of which they revealed the full horror of their unbelief. Ismaili writers see the sect as custodians of sacred mysteries, to which the believer could attain only after a long course of preparation and instruction, marked by progressive initiations. The term most commonly used for the organization of the sect is da`wa (in Persian da'vat), meaning mission or preaching; its agents are the dais, or missionaries - literally summoners, who constitute something like an ordained priesthood. In later Ismaili accounts they are variously divided into higher and lower ranks of preachers, teachers, and licentiates. Below them come the mustajibs, literally respondents, the lowest rank of initiates; above them is the hujja (Persian hujjat), or Proof, the senior da'i. The word ja?ira, island, is used to desi nate the territorial or ethnic jurisdiction over which a da'i presides. Like other Islamic sects and orders, the Ismailis often refer to their religious leaders as Elder - Arabic Shaykh or Persian Pir. A term commonly used for members of the sect is rafiq - comrade.2 I

In 1094 the Ismailis faced a major crisis. The Fatimid Caliph al-Mustansir, Imam of the time and head of the faith, died in Cairo, leaving a disputed succession. The Ismailis in Persia refused to recognize his successor on the Egyptian throne, and declared their belief that the rightful heir was his ousted elder son Nizar (see above, pp. 34-5). Until this split, the organization in Persia, at least nominally, had been under the supreme authority of the Imam and the Chief Da'i in Cairo. Hasan-i Sabbah had been their agent, first as deputy, then as successor of Abd al-Malik ibn Attash. There was now a complete break, and henceforth the Persian Ismailis neither enjoyed the support nor endured the control of their former masters in Cairo.

A crucial problem was the identity of the Imam - the central figure in the whole theological and political system of the Ismailis. Nizar had been the rightful Imam after al-Mustansir - but Nizar was murdered in prison in Alexandria, and his sons were said to have been killed with him. Some of the Nizaris claimed that Nizar was not really dead but in concealment and would return as Mahdi - that is to say, that the line of Imams was at an end. This school did not survive. What Hassan-i Sabbah taught his followers on this point is not known, but later the doctrine was adopted that the Imamate passed to a grandson of Nizar, who was secretly brought up in Alamut. In one version it was an infant that was smuggled from Egypt to Persia; in another it was a pregnant concubine of Nizar's son that was taken to Alamut, where she gave birth to the new Imam. According to Nizari belief, these things were kept strictly secret at the time, and not made known until many years later.

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 io96, 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