Question on the Assassins

[discovery1]

Where was their center of operations, I believe it was called 'The Eagle's Nest'? I thought it was in Syria, but I was told that the Hashemite Kingdom is Jordan. That would make sense if it were the home of the Hashishin. Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.

[Jacque Schtrapp]

Assassins - a word which first surfaced in 1090 as the name of a renegade sect of Shia Muslims, the Hashashun or Hashishin.

They were so-called because members of the sect, when carrying out their missions, seemed so serene in accepting their own deaths, they were believed to have been drugged with hashish. Thus, they were known as the Hashishin, later corrupted to Assassins.

The sect was founded by Hasan Ibn al-Sabbah, a Persian of 'immense culture, a devotee of poetry profoundly interested in the latest advance of science', and 'an inseparable companion of the poet Omar Khayyam', according to the Lebanese scholar, Amin Maalouf.

Indignant at the fall of the Shia dynasty, the Buwayhids, in Persia, and at the rise to dominance of the Seljuks, upholders of Sunni orthodoxy, across the region, Hasan established a secret politico-religious organisation to reform the Shia caliphate and take revenge on the Sunnis.

'All members of the organisation,' writes Professor Maalouf, 'from novices to the grand master, were ranked according to their level of knowledge, reliability and courage.

'Hasan's favourite technique for sowing terror among his enemies was murder. 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 the city, familiarising themselves with the habits of their victims.

'Although the preparation was always conducted in the utmost secrecy, the execution had to take place in public, indeed before the largest possible crowd.'

Besides striking terror among his opponents by killing off prominent Sunnis - like the architect of Seljuk power, the Nizam al-Mulk, who was assassinated in 1092 in a spectacular raid on his palace - Hasan wished also to advertise the heroism of his group.

His executioners were called fidain (or fedayeen) - or in modern parlance, 'suicide commandos', for they themselves were almost always killed on the spot.

Some other aspects of the Hashishin also have a contemporary aspect. Hasan took great pains to establish 'an autonomous fiefdom', far from the major powers. He found it in a remote corner of Syria.

Secondly, like Al-Qaeda's leaders, the chief figures in the Hashishin were astonishingly elusive. One of the most elusive was a man called Rashid al-Din Sinan, a ruthless character who managed to frighten even the great Salah al-Din Yusuf (or Saladin).

Sinan, who was never captured, passed into legend as the 'Old Man of the Mountain'.

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