"Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness.
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
~ George Santayana

A prescient article: Terrorism is not new, it's very old. For 150 years, a closed sect successfully sniped at established leadership. Stop searching for the "message" of the today's terrorists: Just being annoying is some people's idea of success. That's evidently enough of a message to fill the international news media with themselves and block out much more valuable attention to analysis of how to deal with the multiple problems the world faces.

Bold formatting added.

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FROM: Smithsonian October 1986 - Volume 17, Number 7
By Pico lyer

As fancifully described by Marco Polo circa 1298, the "Old Man of the Mountain" kept his assassins bemused with potions and "numbers . . . of the most beautiful damsels in the world." In fact, they were ascetics.

A mysterious sect gave its name to political murder

Eight hundred years ago in Persia and Syria the religious minority known as Assassins killed by stealth to intimidate their enemies

Whenever an enemy had to be silenced, the lord of the lonely mountaintop castle might choose from among his secret fraternity a young volunteer. The devotee would be presented with a dagger and fortified by a reminder that in killing an enemy of the faith he was performing a sacred act. Thus armed, the agent would come down from the mountain on a suicide mission, disguised as a Sufi, perhaps, or a servant or soldier. Stealthily, working always under cover, he would insinuate himself into the camp of the blacklisted prince or religious leader and there find work, lioping to win a position of trust. Patiently, he would wait for days, weeks, sometimes months. Then, when the moment was finally ripe, the killer would suddenly appear before his host and the edge of the blade would flash into view, to be buried in the heart of its appointed victim.

Thus could one describe a fascinating, shadowy religious group who for 150 years, starting at the end of the 11th century, stirred fear in the hearts of powerful men throughout much of the known world. The group came to be known as the Assassins.

Trained in remote mountain fortresses, first in Persia, then also in Syria, ready to follow to the grave—and beyond—such charismatic leaders as Hasan-i Sabbah and Sinan ibn Salman ibn Muhammad (known as the "Old Man of the Mountain"), the Assassins discovered that, with a single carefully planned blow, a tiny force prepared to die in the course of killing others could cripple a Goliath of an enemy. They realized, too, that the fear or memory of such an attack could be as paralyzing as an attack itself. From A.D. 1090 to about 1256 the Assassins used those precepts to unsettle everyone who opposed them—killing viziers and kings, attacking the great Muslim hero Saladin, and eventually doing battle with the forces first brought by Genghis Khan during the Mongol invasion of the Middle East. It was even said that they served as hired killers for the Crusader King, Richard the Lion Hearted of England.

For 800 years, the sect has been largely shrouded in mystery and still is glimpsed through a mist of rumors and charges and speculations. But it is known that the word assassin, still used to describe a political murderer, was applied to members of the sect, and that the name itself seems to have originated in the Arabic word hashishiyyin, which is the colloquial plural of hashish.

The intriguing connection between the two, like the whole mysterious legend of the Assassins, was most fancifully presented by Marco Polo, who passed through Persia in 1273. Speaking of the Assassin chief. Polo wrote: "He had caused a certain valley between two mountains to be enclosed, and had turned it into a garden, the largest and most beautiful that ever was seen .. . flowing freely with wine and milk and honey and water; and numbers of ladies and of the most beautiful damsels in the world, who could play on all manner of instruments and sung most sweetly, and danced in a manner that it was charming to behold. For the Old Man desired to make his people believe that this was actually Paradise....

"Now, no man was allowed to enter the Garden save those whom he intended to be his ASHISHIN. There was a Fortress at the entrance . . . strong enough to resist all the world, and there was no other way to get in. He kept at his Court a number of youths of the country, from 12 to 20 years of age. . . . He would introduce them into his garden . . . having first made them drink a certain potion [thought by some to contain hashish] which cast them into a deep sleep.... "... So when the Old Man would have any Prince slain," Polo continues, "he would say to such a youth: Go thou and slay So and So; and when thou returnest, my Angels shall bear thee into Paradise. And should'st thou die nevertheless even so, I will send my Angels to carry thee back into Paradise. . ..' And in this manner the Old One got his people to murder any one whom he desired to get rid of."

Modern Islamic scholars point out that there is no proof of the use of hashish by the Assassins. Be that as it may, however, the origins of the group that came to be known as the Assassins lie deep in the complex history of Islam. All Muslims believed, and still believe, that there is but one God and Muhammad is his prophet, chosen agent for a series of divine revelations that resulted in the Koran. But when the Prophet Muhammad died in 632, he left no obvious successor to serve as Imam, the Islamic term for spiritual leader. Most of his followers accepted Abu Bakr, his father-in-law, as Imam. A few, however, were convinced that Muhammad had designated as his successor Ali, the husband of his daughter, Fatima. In time, the former group, favoring Abu Bakr, called themselves Sunnis. Today they account for about 90 percent of the world's 800 million Muslims. The minority following splintered into various gatherings of subsects who believed that leadership must come from descendants of Ali and Fatima. They were, and are, collectively known as Shiatu Ali (the Party of Ali), or more simply, Shiites.

From 656 till 680, the two groups struggled with each other. Gradually, however, those who became Sunnis settled into a position of worldly power under their caliph (sovereign), who ruled first in Damascus and then in Baghdad, while the Shiites came to be a minority opposition. And since in an Islamic state there is no sharp demarcation between religion and politics, the differences between the sects sometimes resulted in bitter political divisions.

As the Sunnis consolidated their hold on power, the Shiites seem to have developed a certain appeal for the discontented of the Islamic world. Shiism included in its ranks many eclectic minority groups. Some held Gnostic beliefs, some had faith in reincarnation, others hoped for an imminent messiah; early on a few even practiced, as a religious duty, the strangling of enemies with cords. All the heterodox factions, however, were united by a single overarching goal: to overthrow the Sunnis and give to the Islamic world its proper Imam, spiritual heir and divinely appointed successor to the Prophet.

Before his death in 765, the Sixth Shiite Imam, Jatar al-Sadiq, first named his elder son Ismail as Imam, but after Ismail died he named his younger son, Musa. The majority of Shiites accepted this and went on for 113 years, tracing the line of spiritual teachers, through Musa, to a 12th Imam. (In Islam they are called "Twelvers.") But a few believers, who became known as the Ismailis, held that the line of succession for the real Imam, their Imam, should have gone through Ismail and his descendants.

As a minority faction within a minority sect, the Ismailis were compelled to devise ingenious tactics to survive and contend for power. One precautionary device was to maintain that their Imam might choose to remain in hiding, only to reveal himself at a later date. This notion was in turn supported by the principle of taqiyya (for "precautionary dissimulation"), which allows Muslims, if under threat, to deny their specific faith. Thus an Ismaili, when embattled, could protect himself by pretending to be a Sunni.

Ismailis believe that though revelation stopped with the Prophet's death, spiritual guidance is necessary for the faithful. It is provided by the Imams who are infallible and whose commands must be obeyed, at least with regard to the Koran. The young sect gathered momentum swiftly. By 910, an Ismaili Imam named Ubaidallah was proclaiming himself caliph, this time in the name of Ali and Fatima, the Prophet's daughter. Gradually a Fatimid Empire spread across North Africa, Arabia and Syria; as its capital the sect created the glittering cosmopolitan city of Cairo, soon renowned for magnificent gardens and bazaars, well-stocked libraries and well-ordered streets. It now seemed possible that the Fatimid Caliphate might overmatch the Sunni Caliphate in Baghdad. But the Sunnis had made converts among the tough Seljuk Turks, who upheld Sunnism partly in order to help maintain a certain political unity in the Islamic heartland. Eventually, in 1171, a Sunni warrior named Saladin, in the process of trying to unite Syria and Egypt, toppled the Fatimid Caliphate and took power in Cairo.

By that time, however, the Ismailis divided over the question of which son, Nizar or al-Mustali, should succeed a Fatimid caliph who died in 1094. In time the followers of al-Mustali more or less withered away. But the militant followers of Nizar flourished, proclaiming a doctrine known as the New Preaching which sometimes, fundamentalist critics say, emphasized the role of the living Imam, even at the expense of the original intent of the Koran. For all Nizari Shiites thereafter, their Imam was the true Imam and all others imposters. The quarrel between the two brothers created a bitter new rivalry that helped the Assassins grow. Historically, the arch-Assassin was a man named Hasan-i Sabbah. Born around the middle of the llth century, the future founder and master of the Assassins grew up in Persia, a devoted Shiite and a studious youth. At the age of 17, he happened to meet a teacher, Amira Zarrab, who urged him to turn his eye to Ismaili texts.

After he had nearly died from a wasting disease, Hasan decided that God was advising him to change his ways. He converted to Ismailism in 1072 and later set out on a roundabout pilgrimage to an Ismaili religious center in distant Cairo.

When he reached the city in 1078, the wayfaring scholar was greeted by some of the top Ismaili officials; within three years, however, his independent disposition landed him in prison and later got him deported.

For nine years, often dressed as mendicants and holy men, Hasan and a few fellow missionaries, known as dais, traveled the deserts and mountains of Persia, preaching Hasan's own brand of Ismailism, which allows the true Imam to interpret spiritual laws Sunnis tend to regard as fixed. Hasan—erudite enough to command respect, yet magnetic enough to win devotion—was the perfect catalyst for a shift in faith. Many people pledged themselves to the new creed of justice and redemption.

In time he began to concentrate on the rugged highlands of northern Persia, around Davlam. Both the inhospitable terrain and the hardy hill people were well-suited to resistance against what Hasan regarded as the unlawful authority of the Seljuk Turks. All he needed now was an impregnable sanctuary.

High atop the Elburz Mountains, on a lonely ridge 6,000 feet above the sea and circled by eagles, stood the castle of Alamut. Commanding a royal view of the valley below, accessible only by a single, almost vertical pathway, the remote fortress was an ideal hideout and headquarters.

It was also occupied. Undaunted, Hasan executed his first strategic masterstroke. First, he sent a dai into the castle to begin converting its residents. Then, on September 4, 1090, the leader himself stole into the stronghold in disguise. A little later, the reigning lord of Alamut found that his subjects were ignoring his orders in favor of another's. Hasan, in the manner of a human Trojan horse, had taken over. The displaced ruler was left with no option but to accept his usurper's generous draft for 3,000 gold dinars and leave the place in the hands of the Assassins.

During the next 33 years, Alamut served as sanctuary and symbol for Hasan's solitary rule. Throughout his stay, he lived in a tiny house; only twice, it is said, did he venture out — on both occasions to visit the roof. Much of the time he simply buried himself in books about theology, geometry, astronomy and magic. Even the Sunni chronicler Rashid al-Din, no friend of the Assassins, acknowledged that Hasan "lived an ascetic, abstemious and pious life."

To strengthen Alamut, he developed an irrigation system for nearby fields, recruited scholars and built fortifications. New followers migrated to the valley, enough of them to be regarded as a threat by the Seljuk establishment. At the same time, Hasan sent dais scattering around Persia. Soon the order had set up all but unbreakable strongholds among the dispossessed people of Quhistan in the southeast and among the disaffected mountain dwellers of the southwest.

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Within the castle, Hasan then gathered a group of healthy young fighters. Trained in the strictest secrecy along Spartan lines unlike the languors suggested by Marco Polo, the fraternity received a broad education in languages and the use of daggers, in etiquette and swordsmanship. They were also subjected to an almost monastic discipline: food was as plain as possible. Hasan banished all drinking in the castle, on penalty of death — when one of his two sons broke the rule lie was executed as an example. Even the playing of a flute was forbidden. Thus did the zealots of Alamut swiftly learn that their Master's word was truth, his wish their command. Hasan fashioned a corps of devotees as sharp and unquestioning as the knives they wielded, and as deadly.

He now had at hand a powerful tactical weapon. According to legend his first significant victim was no less than the Grand Vizier, Nizam al-Mulk, chief administrator for Sultan Malikshah, the Seljuk ruler of Persia. The Grand Vizier had been denouncing the legitimacy of the Alamut reign and seemed ready to crush it. In response, the story goes, Hasan selected one of his most accomplished fighters and sent him to Nizam al-Mulk dressed as a holy man with a petition. One night, as the Vizier was being carried on a litter to his harem, Hasan's agent stepped suddenly before him, drew forth his dagger and plunged it into the Vizier's heart. "The killing of this devil," Hasan is said to have declared, "is the beginning of bliss."

Many scholars contend that Malikshah himself may have had his Grand Vizier killed because he was becoming too powerful, and then blamed it on the Assassins. In either case the killing confirmed Hasan's fearsome reputation—and tactics.

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Hasan soon realized that one flawlessly conceived attack could achieve as much as a battle. ". . . by one single warrior on foot," wrote an Ismaili poet, "a king may be stricken with terror, though he own more than 100,000 horsemen." Selecting his victims carefully, Hasan picked off at least 50 leading opponents—sometimes paralyzing the will of a hostile community by taking the life of its military commander or principal divine.

The practice was made all the more relentless because of its religious underpinning. To the Assassins, these attacks were not wild and wanton outbursts of violence, but hallowed acts of justice, performed deliberately and only with a dagger that had been blessed by the Master. Nor were the executioners regarded as criminals. All Muslims are promised paradise if they die in the Holy War for Islam, but Assassins killed in action were also regarded as martyrs who had earned a place on a special honor roll kept by the Master. It was no coincidence that the dagger men were called fidais, or the "faithful."

So fierce and consuming was the legend of their loyalty that it became proverbial: a medieval suitor would swear to his beloved that he was "faithful as an Assassin." The killers sought no personal gain from their acts; indeed, some hoped to pay for their missions with their lives. To survive an assault was often seen as tantamount to failure. One Assassin attack, according to the Aleppine historian Kamal al-Din Ibn al-Adim, culminated in the death of seven of the eight fidais. When she heard of this, the mother of one of the assailants "rejoiced and anointed her eyelids with kohl. . . ." But when her son returned home and she realized that he had been the survivor, "she was grieved, and tore her hair and blackened her face."

Thanks to their dissembling policy of taqiyya and their skill at disguise, Hasan's men were difficult to identify and hard to break; most would rather die than betray their colleagues. And, as their reputation grew, the threat of killing sent fear into the heart of every enemy. Hasan sometimes waited years to take his revenge. Opponents of the Assassins came to know that anyone — a trusted attendant, the man next door, even a holy supplicant — could suddenly prove to be a dagger-wielding Assassin. The prospect of such an attack could be as crippling as an attack itself: some rulers barricaded themselves at home; others turned against innocent courtiers. The Assassins so poisoned the minds of their contemporaries that their hand was often seen in the deaths of individuals they could not have possibly killed.

The order also had considerable historic luck. No sooner had the Grand Vizier Nizam al-Mulk been cut down than Sultan Malikshah died too, leaving the empire of the Seljuk Turks leaderless and in disarray. So also when some years later another sultan resolved to starve the order out of Alamut by destroying all its crops and fruit trees, that sultan died too, just as Hasan's men were about to give in. The siege was broken off.

As soon as the new sultan, Sanjar, began rebuffing Hasan's offers of peace, it seems he was treated to a crash course in Assassin tactics. One night, an accomplice of Hasan's crept into Sanjar's tent while he slept and plunged a dagger into the ground by his side. Later, a message arrived from Hasan: "Did I not wish the Sultan well that dagger which was struck into the hard ground would have been placed in his soft breast."

Sanjar got the point and acted accordingly. When he sent envoys to negotiate with the chieftain of Alamut, legend has it that they in turn were given a simple demonstration of the Master's power. At the audience, the story goes, Hasan spoke one word and a young devotee at his side pulled out his dagger and slit his own throat. He issued another signal and another initiate instantly hurled himself over the ramparts to his death. Sixty thousand others, Hasan told the Sultan's emissaries, were prepared to do the same. At that, Sanjar's men agreed to sign a treaty of peace.

In 1124, the order suffered its first great setback—Hasan fell ill. Having executed his only remaining son because he had arranged for the death of a fellow Assassin, he had no sons left to succeed him. His command, therefore, fell not to one of his own kin but into the hands of a veteran fighter called Buzurgumid.

Under the leaders who followed Buzurgumid, the sect continued its policy of killing Sunnis and rival Fatimid Ismaili leaders while preaching rebellious religious theory. In 1127, after the sultan's Grand Vizier led another attack on Alamut, two fidais got into his service as grooms, and one day stabbed him to death while in the si.ibles. Three years later, in far-off Cairo, ten Assassins leapt out of the bushes and cut down the Fatimid caliph. Then in 1139, two-dozen executioners did the same to the caliph of Baghdad.

Though the honor roll of assassination continued to lengthen, the sect gradually became more and more involved in savage local squabbles. But the Assassins lost none of their cunning. Under Muhammad II, the fourth succeeding leader after Hasan, a fidai was sent to the learned Sunni theologian Fakhr al-Din Razi, one of Ismailism's most formidable spiritual opponents. For seven months, the Assassin diligently audited Razi's courses. Then, one day, he asked the great scholar whether they might discuss a tough theological question in private. Hardly had Razi assented than the agent pulled out his dagger, sat on the theologian's chest and demanded that he retract his religious views. The request was even harder to refuse because the Assassin also offered a bag of 365 gold dinars. Never again did Razi speak against the Ismailis. When a student once asked him why he had undergone such a change of heart, the professor wryly observed that Ismaili arguments were "both weighty and trenchant."

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Even as the Assassin movement was losing momentum in Persia, it became known to Europeans tor the first time because Hasan had sent representatives to the mountainous parts of Syria to acquire fortress bases. Syria, like modern Lebanon, was then a hornet's nest of sects and subsects and factions, a gallimaufry of Christian dissenters, heretics, Fatimid Ismailis and such breakaway Shiite sects as the Druzes, who to this day figure in the struggle that goes on around Beirut. Among the people of the mountain vallevs Assassin dais found a willing audience.

The most celebrated Assassin chief in Syria was Sinan ibn Salman ibn Muhammad, who took over a cliff-hanging castle at Kahf in 1162 and was called by the Crusaders the "Old Man of the Mountain." Sinan managed to strengthen his position until the Syrian Assassins were almost independent of Alamut. So strong and celebrated did he become, that maps of the Middle East during the Crusades included a large, roughly triangular area in the mountains behind the Syrian coast marked "Country of the Assassins."

Even during the centuries of the Crusades, when fierce European knights and nobles were carving out Christian kingdoms on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean and inland toward the Holy City of Jerusalem, local Assassins still chose to concentrate on the killing of Orthodox Sunni soldiers and spiritual leaders. Twice they even tried to kill Saladin, the Sultan and ruler of Egypt who—though he had overthrown the Fatimid Ismaili Caliphate—strove from 1174 to 1192 to unite nearby Islamic peoples against the Crusaders. He survived, but only because he resorted to avoiding contact with strangers and sleeping in a special wooden tower. It was not until around 1150 that the Ismaili Assassins claimed their first Christian victim, Count Raymond II of Tripoli, thus doing away with an enemy of Islam. At one point two fidais, pretending to be Christian monks, dispatched the then king of Jerusalem, Conrad of Montferrat. Under torture of slow fire and flaying, one of the dagger men claimed that he had been hired for the task by Richard the Lion Hearted. Although the Assassin may have been dissimulating, his story gained credibility when Richard's protege, Count Henry of Champagne, married Montferrat's widow and took over his domain.

If Assassins actually did work on behalf of Richard, it certainly marked a betrayal of the order's guiding principles and was a sign of the decline that eventually did set in. Where once the Assassins had been devoted believers willing to pay any price to protect their faith, they gradually lowered their standards. After Sinan's death, more and more fidais took to serving local rulers as security guards or free-lance hit men.

The Assassins, however, never seem to have concentrated heavily on attacking the Crusaders. Around 1174, in fact, Sinan attempted a rapprochement with the Kingdom of Jerusalem. To that end, it is said, he promised that his entire sect would convert to Christianity.

The deterioration of the sect in Persia became more and more pronounced, too. As lord of Alamut, Jalal al-Din Hasan pledged his loyalty to the Suniii orthodoxy in 1210. To convince doubters that lie was not simply exercising taqiyya, lie even allowed the works of Hasan-i Sabbah to be removed from the castle's great library and burned.

Alamut's final collapse came in the middle of the 13th century, decades after Genghis Khan and tens of thousands of Mongol tribesmen had thundered across the plains of Central Asia into the Middle East. The Assassins at first were eager to assist these fellow enemies of the Caliphate. But after the Great Khan's grandson Hulegu learned that the Assassins might be after him, he resolved to demolish the entire sect. Following heated battles and prolonged resistance in several Assassin fortresses, he managed to capture Alamut and destroy it. Rukn al-Din Khurshah, the last lord of Alamut, made peace with his conquerors. But in the end, he and most of his family were butchered.

Yet a remnant of the resilient sect somehow found a way to survive. Shorn of power and little known, at least to the Western world, for centuries they rallied around Rukn al-Din's son and generations of his successors. They came to public notice in Europe and America again only in the 1830s and '40s, when the head of the order led uprisings against the Shah of Iran and found himself obliged to move to India with many of his followers. Earlier, the Shah had conferred on him the worldly title of Aga Khan (or, roughly, leader). In Bombay he found a group of Indians known as Khojas, who had been converted to Ismailism in the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries. Some refused their allegiance to the Aga Khan and some killings occurred.

The dispute eventually required the British-Indian authorities to conduct a trial and search out the Ismaili line of succession for six centuries back, finally declaring the Aga Khan's title bona fide. To this day, the Ismailis (claimed to be 12 to 15 million in number) still take as their Imam the fourth (and present) Aga Khan, a handsome, benevolent, pin-striped Harvard man who lives in Europe and visits his people in a white private jet. It is a sign of the times that after he was installed as God's agent on Earth in 1957, the Aga Khan was serenaded by a Boy Scout band playing "Way down upon the Swanee River."

It has been centuries, of course, since the Ismailis have had anything to do with organized killing. Emphasizing the balance between spiritual values and good works, they are now pragmatic, law-abiding group that stresses success in business and the professions. Ismaili scholars emphasize that the tactics of the Assassins are not typical of Ismaili culture. They point with pride to Ismaili contributions to scholarship and social development throughout their history. In addition to founding the city of Cairo, they established the University of al-Azhar and an academy of science in Egypt. Renowned philosophers, jurists, mathematicians and scientists have flourished under the patronage of Ismaili Imams.

The Aga Khan Foundation, to which many Ismailis contribute, spends more than $60 million a year on health, education and rural-development projects in Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Last November the $300-million Faculty of Health Sciences at the Aga Khan University opened in Karachi. A program at Harvard and MIT, funded by the Aga Khan, offers a master's degree in design tor Islamic cultures. And his Award for Architecture is given every three years for up to $500,000—making it the world's largest.

The Assassins have long disappeared into history. Yet there is still abroad in many parts of the world the illusion that murder committed for religious or political purposes is an ennobling act. Just before his death, Hasan-i Sabbah whispered to his attendants, "Remember: my spirit is vigilant."

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BIBLIOGRAPHY The Order of Assassins by Marshall G. S. Hodgson, AMS Press (New York), 1980 The Assassins by Bernard Lewis, Al Saq Books (London), 1985 "Assassins" by Azim A. Nanji, Encyclopedia of Religion, edited by Mircea Eliade, Macmillan, 1986

Captions:
Hasan-i Sabbah, a charismatic Shiite scholar, was the arch-Assassin; all his portraits are of dubious accuracy. When Nizam al-Mulk, Grand Vizier to the Sultan of Persia, was killed the sect got credit for it; defacement of painting is a mystery.

The Assassins killed and proselytized all across the Middle East. Alamut was Hasan's stronghold; Kalit, the Old Man of the Mountain's. [Alamut is in northern Iran just south of Caspian Sea, north of Tehran; Kahf is in western Syria near the coast] Like all Shiites, the Assassins held that true succession tlom Muhammad ran through his daughter Fatima (right) and her sons.

As present Aga Khan, Karim, 49, uses wealth to help underdeveloped countries.

In 1957, playboy Aly Khan was passed over as Imam in favor of son Karim.

In 1258, two years after he had smashed the Assassin stronghold at Alamut, Genghis Khan's grandson Hulegu successfully laid siege to the city of Baghdad.

FILE: 1090-1256_Assassins_Persia&Syria.rtf