You’ve probably heard that the word assassin comes from drugged up medieval murderers known as the hashishim.
It’s a good story, but it’s probably not true. Blame this guy…
This rather lovely mosaic of Marco Polo is in the Palazzo Doria-Tursi in Genoa, Italy.
Foreigners travelling through the Middle East like Marco Polo were told stories of a sect of fearsome murderers. Young Marco got the wrong end of the stick, and some of his misunderstandings stuck for centuries.
Misunderstood or not, the assassins were real. The original killers were known as Asāsiyyūn, which means ‘people who are faithful to the foundation of the faith’, which is a funny way to describe murderers. It only makes sense when you understand that they weren’t blades for hire. Like many of the most dangerous people, they did their killing for God.
The killers were members of a religious sect known as the Nizaris, who carved out a state within a state within the Seljuk Turkish empire. Their domain was a small, but impenetrable network of mountain fortresses.
The Nizari bases were enclaves rather than contiguous territory. They were spread between the south-west corner of the Caspian sea, and north-east of the Mediterranean.
Like many religious minorities throughout history, Nizaris within the Seljuk empire were subject to discrimination and stereotyping. The term ‘Hashishim’ is most likely an insult, used to label all adherents of the sect as dope-smokers. There’s no reason to think it has any basis in fact, but it stuck, and made it to the ears of Marco Polo.
The head of the Nizari order was known as ‘The Old Man of The Mountain’, and he claimed direct descent from the prophet Mohammed.
The first holder of the title was Hassan-i Sabbah. Hassan was a philosopher and scholar, widely resepected across the Middle East. He converted the people of the Rudbar region of northern Iran to his sect, before infiltrating and seizing the fortress of Alamut as a permanent base. From these small beginnings, he grew a kingdom, and an army.
He knew he stood no chance in a direct confrontation with the might of the Seljuk empire, so he used terror tactics and psychological warfare to defend his territory. Assassination was a key tool. Any ruler that threatened his power would be struck down. Caliphs, Sultans and Crusader lords died by the blades of his warriors.
This 14th century illustration shows the murder of a Seljuk emperor.
For two centuries, the Nizaris were untouchable, but eventually this immovable object met an unstoppable force – the Mongol Empire.
Möngke Khan, grandson of Genghis, launched a vast army to conquer the Middle East. The assassins met this new threat the same way they always had, but Mongol emperors were hard to kill. The enraged khan strengthened his army with 1000 siege engineers from China to reduce the Nizari mountain fortresses to rubble.
The Mongol army assaults Alamut. Note camel in foreground. They’re originally from central Asia (& later imported to Egypt) so their inclusion in a Mongol army shouldn’t be a surprise.
In 1256, the mountain headquarters of Alamut fell, and the Nizari state was wiped off the map, but the legacy lived on. Less than a hundred years later, the word ‘assassin’ was used in the stories of Florentine chronicler Giovanni Villani. From there, it spread across Europe.
All that remains: the rubble of a Nizari castle.
And incredibly, the descendants of the Old Man of the Mountain are still with us today! Shah Karim al-Hussaini is better known as The Aga Khan. He’s the head of the Nizari faith, he’s worth over a billion dollars, making him the tenth richest royal in the world.
I’m not sure why he counts as royal, given that his family haven’t ruled any territory for 800 years. I don’t make the rules. Blame Forbes magazine.
A billion dollars, and your family outlived the Mongol empire. No wonder he looks happy.