The Assassins: A Redical Sect in Islam

by Bernard Lewis

  On 1 September 1210 the lord of Alamut, Muhammad 11, died, possibly of poison, and was succeeded by his son Jalal al-Din Hasan. Already during his father’s lifetime, Hasan had shown signs of dissatisfaction with the doctrines and practices of the qiyāma and of a desire for acceptance in the larger brotherhood of Islam. ‘During his childhood,’ says Juvayni, ‘his father had designated him as his successor. When he grew up and showed signs of intelligence, he rejected his father’s creed and felt disgusted with the customs of heresy and libertinism. His father having guessed what his feelings were, a sort of hostility sprang up between them and they were apprehensive and mistrustful of one another . . . Now Jalal al-Din Hasan, whether because of the orthodoxy of his beliefs or because of his hostility towards his father, conspired against Muhammad and sent secretly to the Caliph of Baghdad and the sultans and rulers of other lands to claim that, unlike his father, he was by faith a Muslim and that when his turn came to reign he would abolish the Heresy and reintroduce the observance of Islam . . . From the very moment of his accession Jalal al-Din professed Islam, and severely rebuked his people and party for their adherence to the Heresy, and strictly forbade them continuing therein, urging them to adopt Islam and follow the rites of the Shari’a. He sent messengers to the Caliph of Baghdad, Muhammad Khorazmshah and the maliks and emirs of Iraq and elsewhere to notify them of these changes; and because of his having prepared the way during his father’s lifetime by announcing his position to them all, they now believed his word, especially in Baghdad, where a decree was issued confirming his conversion to Islam, and all manner of favours were shown to him: a correspondence was opened with him and he was addressed with titles of honour . . . He became known as Jalal al-Din the Neo-Muslim and during his reign his followers were called Neo-Muslims.’ The psychologist may also note that while differing from his Ismaili father, Hasan seems to have been strongly attached to his devoutly Sunni mother.

  The people of Qazvin, not unnaturally, expressed some doubts about the genuineness of this conversion on the part of their old neighbours and enemies, and Jalal al-Din Hasan was at great pains to convince them of his sincerity. He made direct approaches to the city notables, and induced them to send a delegation to Alamut, to inspect the library and remove the works of which they disapproved. These included treatises by Hasan-i Sabbah and by Jalal al-Din Hasan’s own ancestors and predecessors. ‘Jalal al-Din,’ says Juvayni, ‘ordered these works to be burnt in the very presence of those Qazvinis and at their prompting; and he uttered curses and maledictions against his forefathers and the authors of that propaganda. I have seen a letter in the hands of the notables and cadis of Qazvin, which had been dictated by Jalal al-Din Hasan and in which he spoke of his adoption of Islam, and acceptance of the rites of the Shari‘a, and deliverance from the heresy and belief of his forefathers and ancestors. And Jalal al-Din had written a few words in his own handwriting upon the front of that letter and in mentioning his deliverance from their religion, when he came to the names of his fathers and ancestors, he added the curse: “May God fill their graves with fire!” ’21

  Jalal al-Din’s mother went on the Pilgrimage in the year 609/1212-13, and was treated with great respect and deference in Baghdad. It was unfortunate that her visit to Mecca coincided with the murder of the Sharif’s cousin. The Sharif, who greatly resembled his cousin, was sure that he himself was the intended victim, and that the murderer was an assassin sent against him by the Caliph. Full of anger, he attacked and looted the Iraqi pilgrims, and exacted a heavy fine from them, much of which was paid by the lady from Alamut. Despite this mishap, Jalal al-Din was able to maintain his Muslim alliances; he became very friendly with the ruler of Arran and Azerbayjan, exchanging gifts and help of various kinds, and joining forces against their common enemy the ruler of Western Iran. In this they were supported by the Caliph, to whom they had made a joint approach.

  From the Caliph too came help of another kind. ‘After residing for a year and a half in Iraq, Arran and Azerbayjan Jalal al-Din now returned to Alamut. During these journeyings and in the course of his residence in those countries his claim to be a Muslim had been more widely accepted and Muslims now mixed with him more freely. He asked the emirs of Gilan for the hands of their women in marriage.’ The emirs were understandably reluctant either to accept or to refuse the proposals of so redoubtable a suitor, and compromised by making their consent conditional on the sanction of the Caliph. A messenger was promptly sent from Alamut to Baghdad, and the Caliph obliged with a letter authorizing the emirs to give their daughters to Jalal al-Din ‘in accordance with the laws of Islam’. Armed with this decree, he took four Gilani princesses to wife; one of them had the privilege of bearing the next Imam.22

  Jalal al-Din Hasan’s religious, military and matrimonial adventures illustrate the remarkable strength of his position. By a decree no less sudden and sweeping than that which introduced the Resurrection, he abolished it and restored the rule of law – and was obeyed, in Quhistan and Syria as well as in Rudbar. In the course of his campaigns, he left Alamut, as none of his predecessors had done, and stayed away for a year and a half without mishap. Instead of despatching murderers to kill officers and divines, he sent armies to conquer provinces and cities, and by building mosques and bathhouses in the villages completed the transformation of his domain from a lair of assassins to a respectable kingdom, linked by ties of matrimonial alliance to his neighbours.

  Like other territorial princes, Jalal al-Din made and changed alliances. At first he seems to have supported the Khorazmshah, and even had the bidding-prayer recited in Rudbar in his name. Then he transferred his allegiance to the Caliph, and helped him in various ways, including the removal by assassination of a rebel emir who had entered the service of the Khorazmshah, and of a Sharif in Mecca. Later, he was quick to recognize and ingratiate himself with a new and terrible power that was rising in the East. They [the Ismailis] said that when the World-Emperor Jenghiz Khan set out from Turkestan, before he came to the countries of Islam, Jalal al-Din had in secret sent couriers to him and written letters tendering his submission and allegiance. This was alleged by the Heretics and the truth is not clear, but this much is evident, that when the armies of the World-Conquering Emperor Jenghiz Khan entered the countries of Islam, the first ruler on this side of the Oxus to send ambassadors, and present his duty, and accept allegiance was Jalal al-Din.’23

  In November 1221, after a reign of only ten years, Jalal al-Din Hasan died. The disease of which Jalal al-Din died was dysentery and it was suspected that he had been poisoned by his wives in connivance with his sister and some of his kinsmen. The vizier, who by virtue of his will was administrator of the kingdom and tutor of his son Ala al-Din, put to death a great number of his relations, his sister, wives and intimates and confidants on this suspicion; and some he burnt.’24

  Jalal al-Din’s restoration of the ritual laws and his accommodations with orthodoxy and the Caliphate have been variously interpreted. For Juvayni and other Persian Sunni historians, they were the expression of a genuine religious conversion – a desire to abandon the evil beliefs and ways of his predecessors, and bring his people back to the path of true Islam, from which they had strayed so far. The Caliph himself seems to have been satisfied with Hasan’s good faith, and by intervening in support of his marriages in Gilan and giving a position of honour to the chief’s mother on the pilgrimage, showed favour beyond the needs of the alliance. Even the doubters of Qazvin were persuaded of Jalal al-Din’s sincerity. Joseph von Hammer, six centuries later in Metternich’s Vienna, was less easily convinced and had his own little point to make. ‘It is, therefore, more than probable, that Jelaleddin’s conversion of the Ismailites to Islamism, so loudly proclaimed abroad, and his public abjuration of the doctrine of impiety, was nothing else than hypocrisy and deeply designed policy, in order to re-establish the credit of the order, which had been exposed to the anathemas of priests, and the ban of princes, by the inconsiderate publication of their doctrines,
and to gain for himself the title of prince, instead of the dignity of grandmaster. Thus the Jesuits, when they were threatened with expulsion by the parliament, and with a bull of dissolution from the Vatican – when, on all sides, the voices of cabinets and countries rose against the principles of their morals and policy – denied their doctrine of lawful rebellion and regicide, which had been imprudently hinted at by some of their casuists, and openly condemned the maxims which they, nevertheless, secretly observed as the true rules of the order.’25

  For the Ismailis too these changes required explanation. They were after all not just a territorial principality subject to a local chief, though this might be their aspect to the outside world; still less were they a mere band of conspirators and murderers. They were the faithful followers of a religion, with a proud past and a cosmic mission – and like all true believers, they felt the need to preserve the citadel of their integrity intact. This required that all those changes – from the law to the Resurrection, from the Resurrection to a show of Sunnism, and later back to an Ismailism bound by law – be given a religious value and significance.

  An answer was found in two principles – in the doctrine of Taqiyya, the concealment of one’s true beliefs in the face of danger, and in the old Ismaili concept of alternating periods of occultation and manifestation. These corresponded to the periods of outward law and inward truth, and were each inaugurated by an imam bringing a new dispensation. ‘The period of each prophet of the outward forms of the holy law,’ says an Ismaili work of the thirteenth century, ‘is called the period of occultation, and the period of each Qā’im, who possesses the inner truths of the laws of the Prophets, is called qiyāma (Resurrection).’26 A new period of occultation began in 1210, with the accession of Jalal al-Din Hasan. This time it was not the Imams themselves that were hidden, as in the earlier periods of occultation, but the true nature of their mission. When the inner truth was concealed, it did not matter greatly what outward form of legal observance was adopted.

  On Jalal al-Din’s death, he was succeeded by his only son, Ala al-Din Muhammad, a boy of nine. For some time Jalal al-Din’s vizier was the effective ruler of Alamut, and seems to have maintained the policy of accommodation with the Sunni world. A reaction was, however, beginning to gather force. The observance of the holy law was no longer enforced in the Ismaili domains, and there are even reports that it was actively discouraged. Juvayni and the other Persian historians attribute these changes to the new Imam: ‘Now Ala al-Din was but a child and had received no education, for according to their false creed . . . their Imam is basically the same, whether an infant, a youth or an old man, and whatever he says or does . . . must be right . . . Accordingly, whatever course Ala al-Din might take no mortal could express disapproval thereof, and . . . they would not allow him to be chastized, advised or guided aright . . . the administration of affairs fell to the decision of women, and the foundations his father had laid were overthrown . . . those who for fear of his father had adopted the Shari‘a and Islam but in their foul hearts and murky minds still believed in the wicked creed of his grandfather . . . seeing now no one to prevent and deter them from the commission of forbidden sins . . . returned once more to their heresy . . . and . . . recovered their power . . . And the rest, who had accepted Islam from conviction . . . took fright . . . and . . . again concealed the fact that they were Muslims . . .

  ‘After this child had reigned for some five or six years . . . he was overcome with the disease of melancholia . . . No one dared contradict him . . . all reports on affairs inside and outside his realm . . . were kept hidden from him . . . no adviser ever dared breathe a word . . . to him . . . Theft, highway robbery and assault were daily occurrences in his kingdom with and without his connivance; and he thought he could excuse such conduct with false words and the bestowal of money. And when these things had passed all bounds his life, wives, children, home, kingdom and wealth were forfeited to that madness and insanity.’27

  Despite these difficulties, there were still capable leaders to direct the affairs of the sect, and the reign of Ala al-Din was a period of both intellectual and political activity. One of the recognized duties – and glories – of a Muslim ruler was the patronage of science and learning, and the Ismaili Imams had not been backward in this respect. The library of Alamut was famous – even the strongly hostile Juvayni admits to his interest in it – and at this period it attracted a number of scholars from outside. Foremost among these was the philosopher, theologian and astronomer Nasir al-Din Tusi (1201-74) who stayed there for a number of years. At this time he passed as an Ismaili, and indeed wrote Ismaili treatises which are still accepted as authoritative by the sect. Later he claimed to be a Twelver Shi‘ite, whose association with the Ismailis had been involuntary. Which of his allegiances, if either, was taqiyya remains uncertain.

  During the early years of Ala al-Din’s reign, the situation in Iran was favourable to a further Ismaili expansion. The Khorazmian Empire had been shattered by the impact of Mongol invasion, and while the last of the Khorazmshahs, Sultan Jalal al-Din, was trying vainly to restore his broken kingdom, the Ismailis successfully extended their own. At about this time they seized the city of Damghan, near the fortress of Girdkuh, and apparently tried to capture Rayy, where in about 1222 the Khorazmians ordered a massacre of Ismaili da‘is.

  In 1227 Sultan Jalal al-Din forced the Ismailis to accept a truce, and to pay tribute to him for the city of Damghan. Shortly before this, a Khorazmian officer called Orkhan had been assassinated as a reprisal for raids against the Ismaili settlements in Quhistan. Nasawi, the biographer of the Khorazmshah Jalal al-Din, paints a lively picture of the scene: Three of the fida‘is fell upon Orkhan and killed him outside the city. Then they entered the city with their daggers in their hands, shouting the name of Ala al-Din, until they reached the gate of [the vizier] Sharaf al-Mulk. They went into the secretariat building, but did not find him, since he was at that moment in the Sultan’s palace. They wounded a servant and rushed out again, shouting their rallying-cry and vaunting their success. The common people threw stones at them from the roof-tops, until they battered them to death. With their last breaths they shouted: “We are sacrifices for our Lord Ala al-Din”.’

  It was at this time that Badr al-Din Ahmad, the envoy of Alamut, was on his way to see the Sultan. Hearing of these events he was not unnaturally somewhat apprehensive about his reception, and wrote to the vizier asking his advice on whether to continue his journey or turn back. The vizier, fearing for his own life, was only too happy to welcome the Ismaili envoy, hoping that his presence ‘would safeguard him from the fearful fate and dreadful death that had befallen Orkhan’. He therefore urged the envoy to join him and promised to do all he could to help him in his mission.

  The two now travelled together, the vizier making every effort to ingratiate himself with his redoubtable guest. Their friendship, however, was marred by an unfortunate incident. When they reached the plain of Serab, in a moment of abandon at a drinking session, when his potations had had their effect on him, Badr al-Din said: “Even here in your own army we have our fida‘is, who are well established and pass as your own men – some in your stables, some in the service of the Sultan’s chief pursuivant.” Sharaf al-Mulk insisted on seeing them, and gave him his kerchief as a token of safe-conduct. Badr al-Din thereupon summoned five fida‘is, and when they came one of them, an insolent Indian, said to Sharaf al-Mulk: “I would have been able to kill you on such and such a day at such and such a place; I did not do so because I had not yet received orders to deal with you.” When Sharaf al-Mulk heard these words he cast off his cloak and sat before them in his shirt and said: “What is the cause of this? What does Ala al-Din want of me? For what sin or shortcomings on my part does he thirst for my blood? I am his slave as I am the Sultan’s slave, and here I am before you. Do with me as you will!”’ Word of this reached the Sultan, who was infuriated by Sharaf al-Mulk’s abjectness and at once sent orders to him to burn the five fid
a‘is alive. The vizier pleaded for mercy for them, but in vain, and was compelled to carry out the Sultan’s orders. ‘A great fire was kindled at the entrance to his tent, and the five men were thrown into it. As they were burning, they cried out: “We are sacrifices for our lord Ala al-Din!”, until their souls left their bodies which were reduced to ashes and scattered by the winds.’ As an added precaution, the Sultan executed the chief pursuivant, in punishment for his negligence.

  Nasawi personally witnessed the aftermath. ‘One day I was with Sharaf al-Mulk at Bardha’a, when an envoy called Salah al-Din came to him from Alamut and said: “You have burnt five of our fida‘is. If you value your safety, you must pay a bloodwit of 10,000 dinars for each of them.” These words appalled and terrified Sharaf al-Mulk, so that he became incapable of thought or action. He favoured the envoy above all others with generous gifts and splendid honours, and ordered me to write him an official letter, reducing by 10,000 dinars the annual tribute of 30,000 dinars which they were supposed to bring to the Sultan’s treasury. Sharaf al-Mulk affixed his seal to the document.’28