All members, from novices to the grand master, were ranked according to their level of knowledge, reliability and courage. They underwent intensive courses of indoctrination as well as physical training. Ḥasan’s favourite technique for sowing terror among his enemies was murder. The members of the sect were sent individually—or more rarely, in small groups of two or three—on assignments to kill some chosen personality. They generally disguised themselves as merchants or ascetics and moved around in the city where the crime was to be perpetrated, familiarizing themselves with the habits of their victims. Then, once their plan was ready, they struck. Although the preparation was always conducted in the utmost secrecy, the execution had to take place in public, indeed before the largest possible crowd. That was why the preferred site was a mosque, the favourite day Friday, generally at noon. For Ḥasan, murder was not merely a means of disposing of an enemy, but was intended primarily as a twofold lesson for the public: first, the punishment of the victim and, second, the heroic sacrifice of the executioner, who was called fidā'ī (plural: fidā'īn, or fedayeen), or ‘suicide commando’, because he was almost always cut down on the spot.
The serenity with which the members of the sect accepted their own death led their contemporaries to believe that they were drugged with hashish, which is why they were called ḥashashūn, or ḥashīshīn, a word that was distorted into ‘Assassin’ and soon incorporated into many languages as a common noun. The hypothesis is plausible, but like everything else to do with this sect, it is difficult to separate legend from reality. Did Ḥasan encourage the adherents to drug themselves so that they had a sense of being in paradise for a short time, which would thus encourage them to seek martyrdom? Or, more prosaically, was he trying to accustom them to a narcotic in order to keep them dependent on him? Was he simply urging them towards a state of euphoria so that they would not falter at the moment of the murder? Or did he instead rely on their blind faith? Whatever the answer, merely to list the hypotheses is to pay tribute to the exceptional organizer Ḥasan must have been.
Indeed, his success was stunning. The first murder, committed in 1092, two years after the sect was founded, was an epic unto itself. The Seljuks were at the apogee of their power. The pillar of their empire, the man who over thirty years had created a state out of the lands conquered by the Turkish warriors, the architect of the renaissance of Sunni power and of the struggle against Shi‘ism, was an old vizier whose name itself evoked his deeds: Niẓām al-Mulk, or ‘Order of the Realm’. On 14 October 1092 one of Ḥasan’s adherents killed him with a sword-stroke. When Niẓām al-Mulk was assassinated, Ibn al-Athīr wrote, the state disintegrated. Indeed, the Seljuk empire never recovered its unity. Its history would now be punctuated not by further conquests, but by interminable wars of succession. ‘Mission accomplished’, Ḥasan may well have told his comrades in Egypt. The read was now open to a Fatimid reconquest: it was up to Niẓār. In Cairo, however, the insurrection had run aground. al-Afḍal, who inherited the vizierate from his father in 1094, mercilessly crushed the associates of Nizār, who was himself buried alive.
Ḥasan thus found himself in an unforeseen situation. He had not renounced his goal of reviving the Shi‘i caliphate, but he knew that it would take time. He therefore modified his strategy. While continuing to undermine official Islam and its religious and political representatives, he also tried to find a place where he could establish an autonomous fiefdom. What country offered better prospects for such a project than Syria, carved up as it was into a multitude of minuscule rival states? The sect had only to establish a base, to play one city against another, one emir against his brother, and it would survive until the Fatimid caliphate emerged from its torpor.
Ḥasan sent a Persian preacher into Syria, an enigmatic physician-astrologer’ who settled in Aleppo and managed to win the confidence of Riḍwān. Adherents began to converge on the city, to preach their doctrine, to form cells. To preserve the friendship of the Seljuk king, they agreed to do some small favours for him, in particular to assassinate some of his political opponents. Upon the death of the ‘physician-astrologer’ in 1103, the sect immediately sent Riḍwān a new Persian adviser, Abū Ṭāhir, a goldsmith. His influence soon became more overwhelming than that of his predecessor. Riḍwān fell completely under his spell, and according to Kamāl al-Dīn, no Aleppan could obtain the slightest favour from the monarch or settle any administrative problem without dealing with one of the innumerable members of the sect scattered through the king’s entourage.
But the Assassins were hated precisely because of their power. Ibn al-Khashāb in particular relentlessly demanded an end to their activities. He detested them not only for the way they bought and sold influence, but also and above all for their alleged sympathy for the Western invaders. However paradoxical it may seem, the accusation was justified. When the Franj arrived, the Assassins, who had barely begun to settle in Syria, were called Bāṭinis, ‘those who adhere to a faith other than that which they profess in public’. The appellation suggested that the adherents were Muslims only in appearance. The Shi‘is, like Ibn al-Khashāb, had no sympathy for the disciples of Ḥasan because of their break with the Fatimid caliphate, which, however weak, remained the formal protector of the Shi‘is of the Arab world.
Detested and persecuted by all Muslims, the Assassins were not displeased at the arrival of a Christian army that was inflicting one defeat after another on both the Seljuks and al-Afḍal, the murderer of Nizār. There is no doubt that Riḍwān’s outrageously conciliatory attitude toward the Occidentals was due in large part to the counsel of the Bāṭinis.
As far as Ibn al-Khashāb was concerned, the connivance between the Assassins and the Franj amounted to treason. He acted accordingly. During the massacres that followed Riḍwān’s death at the end of 1113, the Bāṭinis were tracked down street by street and house by house. Some were lynched by mobs, others leapt to their death from the ramparts of the city walls. Nearly two hundred members of the sect perished in this manner, among them Abū Ṭāhir the goldsmith. Nevertheless, Ibn al-Qalānisi reports that several managed to flee and sought refuge among the Franj or dispersed in the countryside.
Even though Ibn al-Khashāb had thus deprived the Assassins of their major bastion in Syria, their astonishing career had only just begun. Drawing lessons from their failure, the sect altered its tactics. Ḥasan’s new envoy to Syria, a Persian propagandist by the name of Bahram, decided to call a temporary halt to all spectacular actions and to return to careful and discreet organization and infiltration.
Bahram, the Damascene chronicler relates, lived in the greatest secrecy and seclusion, changing his dress and appearance so cleverly that he moved through the cities and strongholds without anyone suspecting his identity.
Within a few weeks, he had organized a network powerful enough to contemplate emerging from clandestinity. He found an excellent protector in Riḍwān’s replacement.
One day, says Ibn al-Qalānisi, Bahram arrived in Damascus, where the atabeg Tughtigin received him quite correctly, as a precaution against his misdeeds and those of his gang. He was shown great respect and assured of vigilant protection. The second-ranking personality of the Syrian metropolis, the vizier Ṭāhir al-Mazdaghāni, came to an understanding with Bahram, although he did not belong to the sect, and helped him to plant the snares of his malfeasance wherever he willed.
In fact, despite the death of Ḥasan Ibn al-Ṣabbāḥ in his Alamūt retreat in 1124, there was a sharp recrudescence of the activity of the Assassins. The murder of Ibn al-Khashāb was not an isolated act. A year later, another ‘turbaned resister’ of the first importance fell under their blows. All the chroniclers relate his assassination with the utmost solemnity, for the man who, in August 1099, had led the first manifestation of popular outrage against the Frankish invasion had become one of the Muslim world’s leading religious authorities. It was announced from Iraq that the qāḍī of qāḍīs of Baghdad, the splendour of Islam, Abū ṣa‘a
d al-Ḥarawi, had been attacked by Bāṭinis in the great mosque of Hamadān. They had stabbed him to death and fled immediately, leaving no clue or trace behind them. So great was the fear they inspired that no one dared pursue them. The crime aroused great indignation in Damascus, where al-Ḥarawi had lived for many years. The activities of the Assassins were by now provoking mounting hostility, especially in religious circles. The best of the faithful were furious, but they held their tongue, because the Bāṭinis had begun killing those who resisted them and supporting those who approved their aberrations. No one dared to criticize them publicly, neither emir, nor vizier, nor sultan.
This terror was understandable. On 26 November 1126 al-Borsoki himself, the powerful master of Aleppo and Mosul, suffered the terrible vengeance of the Assassins.
And yet, wrote Ibn al-Qalānisi in astonishment, the emir had been on his guard. He wore a coat of mail that could not be penetrated by sabre or knife-blade, and he was always surrounded by soldiers armed to the teeth. But there is no escape from fate. Al-Borsoki had gone, as usual, to the great mosque of Mosul to say his Friday prayers. The scoundrels were there, dressed as Sufis, praying in a corner without arousing any suspicion. Suddenly they leapt upon him and struck him several blows, though without piercing his coat of mail. When the Bặtinis saw that the daggers had not harmed the emir, one of them cried: ‘Strike high, at his head!’ They struck him in the throat and knife thrusts rained down upon him. Al-Borsoki died a martyr, and his murderers were put to death.
Never had the threat represented by the Assassins been so serious. They were no longer simply pests, but had become a plague torturing the Arab world at a time when all its energies were required to confront the Frankish occupation. Moreover, the skein of killings was not yet fully unravelled. A few months after the death of al-Borsoki, his son, who had just succeeded him, was in turn assassinated. Four rival emirs then contended for power in Aleppo, and Ibn al-Khashāb was no longer on the scene to maintain a minimum of cohesion. In autumn 1127, as the city sank into anarchy, the Franj reappeared at the walls. Antioch had a new prince, the young son of the great Bohemond, a huge blond man of eighteen who had just arrived from his homeland to take possession of the familial heritage. He bore his father’s first name and also possessed his impetuous character. The Aleppans lost no time in paying tribute to him, and the most defeatist already saw him as the future conqueror of their city.
The situation in Damascus was no less tragic. The atabeg Tughtigin, ageing and sick, no longer exercised the slightest control over the Assassins. They had their own armed militia, the city administration was in their hands, and the vizier al-Mazdaghāni, who was devoted to them body and soul, had established close contacts with Jerusalem. For his part, Baldwin II made no secret of his intention to crown his career by taking the Syrian metropolis. Only the presence of the aged Tughtigin seemed still to prevent the Assassins from handing the city over to the Franj. But the reprieve was to be brief. By early 1128 the atabeg was visibly wasting away and could no longer rise from his bed. Plots were being hatched at his bedside. He finally expired on 12 February, after designating his son Būri as his successor. The Damascenes were convinced that the fall of their city was now only a matter of time.
Discussing this critical period of Arab history a century later, Ibn al-Athīr would write with good reason:
With the death of Tughtigin, the last man capable of confronting the Franj was gone. The latter then seemed in a position to occupy all of Syria. But God in his infinite kindness took pity on the Muslims.
Part Three
Riposte
(1128 — 1146)
I was about to begin the prayer when a Franj threw himself upon me, seized me, and turned my face to the East, telling me, ‘That’s how you pray!’
USAMAH IBN MUNQIDH
Chronicler (1095–1188)
6
The Damascus Conspiracies
The vizier al-Mazdaghāni, Ibn al-Qalānisi relates, went, as he did every day, to the Pavilion of Roses, in the palace of the citadel, in Damascus. All the emirs and military officers were gathered there. The meeting dealt with various matters. Būri, son of Tughtigin, who was now master of the city, exchanged views with all those present, whereupon they rose to return to their residences. According to custom, the vizier was supposed to leave after the others. As he stood, Būri gestured to one of his associates, who promptly struck al-Mazdaghāni several sabre blows on his head. He was then beheaded, and his body, in two pieces, was carried to the Gate of Iron that all might see what God had in store for those who had recourse to deceit.
News of the death of the Assassins’ protector spread through the souks of Damascus within a few minutes, and was immediately followed by a man-hunt. A huge crowd fanned out through the streets, brandishing sabres and daggers. All the Bāṭinis, their relatives, their friends, and anyone suspected of sympathy for them were tracked through the city, followed home and mercilessly slaughtered. Their leaders were crucified on the battlements of the city ramparts. Several members of Ibn al-Qalānisi’s family took an active part in the massacre. It might be thought that the chronicler himself, who was a 57-year-old high-ranking functionary in that September of 1129, would not have mixed with the populace. But his tone speaks volumes about his state of mind during those bloody hours: By morning, the public squares were rid of the Bāṭinis, and howling dogs vied for their corpses.
The Damascenes were visibly outraged by the Assassins’ hold on their city, and none more so than the son of Tughtigin, who refused to play his allotted role of puppet in the hands of the sect and of the vizier al-Mazdaghāni. For Ibn al-Athīr, however, this was not a mere power struggle, but a fight to save the Syrian metropolis from imminent disaster: al-Mazdaghāni had written to the Franj proposing to hand over Damascus to them if they would give him the city of Tyre in return. Agreement had been reached. They had even set the date, a Friday. Indeed, the troops of Baldwin II were expected at any minute at the city walls; groups of armed Assassins planned to throw open the gates for them, while other commandos were sent to guard the exits of the great mosque to prevent dignitaries and officers from leaving the building until the Franj had occupied the city. A few days before the scheduled execution of this plan, Būri, who had learned of it, hurried to eliminate the vizier, thus giving the signal that unleashed the population against the Assassins.
Had there really been such a plot? One is tempted to doubt it, since Ibn al-Qalānisi himself, despite his evident hatred of the Bāṭinis, never accused them of seeking to deliver the city to the Franj. Nevertheless, Ibn al-Athīr’s account is not implausible. The Assassins and their ally al-Mazdaghāni felt threatened not only by mounting popular hostility, but also by the intrigues of Būri and his entourage. Moreover, they knew that the Franj had decided to take Damascus regardless of the cost. Rather than have to fight too many enemies at once, the sect might well have decided to establish a sanctuary such as Tyre from which preachers and killers could be sent into Fatimid Egypt, now the principal target of the disciples of Ḥasan Ibn al-Ṣabbāḥ.
The sequel to these events lends credence to the hypothesis that there had in fact been a plot. The few Bāṭinis who survived the massacre went to settle in Palestine, under the protection of Baldwin II, to whom they delivered Baniyās, a powerful fortress situated at the foot of Mount Hermon that controls the route from Jerusalem to Damascus. Moreover, several weeks later, a powerful Frankish army appeared in the environs of the Syrian metropolis. It included nearly ten thousand knights and foot-soldiers, who came not only from Palestine but also from Antioch, Edessa, and Tripoli; there were also several hundred warriors freshly arrived from the land of the Franj, who loudly proclaimed their intention to seize Damascus. The most fanatical of them belonged to the order of the Templars, a religio-military society founded ten years earlier in Palestine.
Since he lacked sufficient troops to confront the invaders, Būri hastily appealed to a number of Turkish nomadic bands and a few Arab t
ribes of the region, promising them lucrative recompense if they would help to repel the attack. The son of Tughtigin was well aware that he would be unable to rely on these mercenaries for very long, for they would quickly desert to indulge their lust for plunder. His prime concern was therefore to join the battle as soon as possible. One day in November his scouts informed him that several thousand Franj had begun foraging in the rich plain of Ghūta. Without delay he dispatched his entire army to give chase. The Occidentals, taken by surprise, were quickly surrounded. Some of their knights did not even have time to retrieve their mounts.
The Turks and the Arabs returned to Damascus late in the afternoon, Ibn al-Qalānisi relates. They were triumphant, joyous and laden with booty. The populace rejoiced, morale soared, and the army decided to attack the Franj in their own camp. At dawn the next day, many horsemen set out at full gallop. When they saw great clouds of rising smoke, they thought they had found the Franj, but when they drew near, they discovered that the enemy had decamped after setting fire to their equipment, for they had no more beasts of burden to carry it.
Despite this setback, Baldwin II reassembled his troops for a fresh attack on Damascus. At the beginning of September the region was suddenly engulfed by torrential rains. The Franj camp was transformed into a sea of mud in which men and horses alike were soon hopelessly mired. Broken-hearted, the king of Jerusalem ordered his men to retreat.
Būri, who upon his accession to the throne had been considered a frivolous and timorous emir, had saved Damascus from the two major dangers threatening it, the Franj and the Assassins. Drawing the lessons of his defeat, Baldwin II definitively renounced any new expedition against the city he coveted.