The Assassins: A Redical Sect in Islam Read online

  The Assassins

  By the same author

  The Arabs in History

  The Emergence of Modern Turkey

  The Muslim Discovery of Europe

  Semites and Anti-Semites

  The Political Language of Islam

  Race and Slavery in the Middle East

  The Shaping of the Modern Middle East

  Cultures in Conflict: Christians, Muslims and Jews in the Age of Discovery

  The Middle East: 2000 Years of History from the Rise of Christianity to the Present Day

  The Multiple Identities of the Middle East

  A Middle East Mosaic: Fragments of Life, Letters and History

  What Went Wrong: Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response

  The Assassins

  A RADICAL SECT IN ISLAM

  Bernard Lewis

  Copyright © 1967 by Bernard Lewis

  Preface to the paperback edition © 2003 by Bernard Lewis

  First published in Great Britain in 1967 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London

  First published in the United States in 1968 by Basic Books, Inc, New York

  This edition published by Basic Books, A Member of the Perseus Books Group

  All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address Basic Books, 387 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10016.

  A cataloging-in-publication record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

  ISBN-10: 0-465-00498-9 ISBN-13: 978-0-465-00498-0

  eBook ISBN: 9780786724550

  To Michael

  Illustrations

  PLATES

  1. The title page of Lebey de Batilly’s Traicté

  2. The assassination of the Nizam al-Mulk

  3. Authors, with scribe and attendants

  4. Hülegü on his way to capture the Ismaili castles

  5. Hülegü

  6. An inscription at the castle of Masyaf

  7. The castle of Qa’in

  8. The walls of Qa’in

  9. The castle of Lamasar

  10. The rock of Alamut

  11. The castle of Maymundiz

  12. Qal’a Bozi, near Isfahan

  13. The castle of Masyaf

  14. The citadel of Aleppo

  MAPS

  Mesopotamia, Persia and Central Asia

  Syria and Palestine

  Acknowledgements

  My thanks are due to Professor J, A. Boyle and the Manchester University Press, for permission to cite a number of passages from Ata-Malik Juvaini, The history of the world-conqueror, translated from the Persian by John Andrew Boyle, Manchester 1958; to Professor K. M. Setton and the University of Winsconsin Press for permission to reproduce in this book some parts of my chapter on the Assassins in A history of the Crusades, editor-in-chief Kenneth M. Setton, vol. i, The first hundred years, ed. Marshall W. Baldwin, Philadelphia 1955, I would also like to express my gratitude to Mr G. Meredith-Owens, of the British Museum, for his patient and invaluable help in finding and obtaining illustrations; to Dr Nurhan Atosoy, of the University of Istanbul, for her good offices in identifying and securing copies of material in Turkish collections; to Major Peter Willey, for generously placing his photographs at my disposal; to my wife and daughter for their help in correcting the proofs; and, finally, to Professor A. T. Hatto for once again letting me profit from his keen literary judgment and acute editorial eye.

  B.L.

  The publishers acknowledge with thanks the permission of the following to include illustrations in this book: Major Peter Willey, plates 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11; the British Museum, plates 1 and 5; Mr S. I. Asad, plates 6 and 13; the Süleymaniye Library, Istanbul, plate 3; the Director of the Warburg Institute, plate 4; and the Topkapi Sarayi Museum, Istanbul, plate 2.

  Preface to the Paperback Edition

  Since this book first appeared in 1967 it has acquired a contemporary relevance which it did not have at the time of its original publication. This is perhaps indicated in its subsequent publication history. The English edition was reprinted several times both in Britain and in the United States, and a French translation in Paris appeared in 1982, with a long and interesting introduction by M. Maxime Rodinson. Three separate translations were published in Arabic, one of them with my prior knowledge and consent. An unauthorized Persian translation was published twice in Iran, first under the monarchy, then under the republic. Translations in Japanese, Spanish, Turkish, Italian, German, and Hebrew followed.

  The changing nature of interest in the topic, and therefore in the book, is perhaps best indicated by the subtitles added by foreign translators and publishers. The English original was simply entitled The Assassins: A Radical Sect in Islam. In the French translation— the first foreign-language edition—the subtitle was changed and became “Terrorism and Politics in Medieval Islam.” The Italian translator retained my subtitle and added “The First Terrorists in History”—not, by the way, a correct statement. The German title was “The Assassins: On the Tradition of Religious Murder in Radical Islam.”

  The purpose of all these emendations was, clearly, to suggest a parallel between the movements and actions described in the book and those that are affecting much of the Middle East—and now also the Western world—at the present time. Certainly, the connection between the medieval Assassins and their modern counterparts are striking: the Syrian-Iranian connection; the calculated use of terror; the total dedication of the assassin emissary, to the point of self-immolation, in the service of his cause and in the expectation of heavenly recompense. Some have seen a further resemblance in that both directed their attack against an external enemy, the Crusaders in one case, the Americans and the Israelis in the other.

  There may indeed be such a resemblance, but if so, it is in the misapprehension rather than in the reality of these attacks. According to a view widespread in the Western world since medieval times, the anger and the weapons of the Assassins were directed primarily against the Crusaders. This is simply not true. In the long list of their victims, there were very few Crusaders, and even these were usually marked down as the result of some internal Muslim calculation. The vast majority of their victims were Muslims, and their attacks were directed not against the outsider, seen as basically irrelevant, but against the dominant élites and prevailing ideas in the Islamic world of their time. Some modern terrorist groups do indeed focus on Israelis and on Westerners. But others, probably in the long run more important, have as their targets the existing—in their view apostate—regimes of the Islamic world, and as their objective, the replacement of these regimes by a new order of their own. These points emerged very clearly from the statements made by the assassins of the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat. When the leader of the group proudly proclaimed: “I have killed pharaoh,” he was clearly not condemning pharaoh for making peace with Israel but as the prototype—in the Qur’ân as in the Bible—of the impious tyrant.

  There are also interesting resemblances and contrasts in their methods and procedures. For the medieval Assassins, the chosen victims were almost invariably the rulers and leaders of the existing order–monarchs, generals, ministers, major religious functionaries. Unlike their modern equivalents, they attacked only the great and powerful, and never harmed ordinary people going about the avocations. Their weapon was almost always the same—the dagger, wielded by the appointed Assassin in person. It is significant that they made virtually no use of such safer weapons as were available to them at the time—the bow and crossbow, missiles, and poison. T
hat is to say, they chose the most difficult and protected targets and the most dangerous mode of attack. The Assassin himself, having struck down his assigned victim, made no attempt to escape, nor was any attempt made to rescue him. On the contrary, to have survived a mission was seen as a disgrace.

  In this respect, and only in this respect, the Assassins may indeed be regarded as the forerunners of the suicide bombers of today. But in an important respect the suicide bomber marks a radical departure from earlier belief and practice. Islam has always strongly condemned suicide, regarding it as a major sin. The suicide forfeits any claim he may have had to paradise, however strong, and is doomed to eternal punishment in hell, where his torment will consist of the unending repetition of the act by which he committed suicide. A clear difference was made between throwing oneself to certain death at the hands of an overwhelmingly strong enemy, and dying by one’s own hand. The first, if conducted in a properly authorized holy war, was a passport to heaven; the second to damnation. The blurring of this previously vital distinction was the work of some twentieth-century theologians who outlined the new theory which the suicide bombers put into practice.

  Islam, like Christianity and Judaism, is an ethical religion, and terror and blackmail have no place in its beliefs or commandments. Even while ordaining holy war as a religious duty, Islamic law lays down elaborate laws for the conduct of warfare, including such matters as the opening and termination of hostilities, the treatment of noncombatants, and the avoidance of certain indiscriminate weapons. Nevertheless, then as now, among Muslims as among others, there have been groups who practiced murder in the name of their religion, and a study of the medieval sect of Assassins may therefore serve a useful purpose—not indeed as a guide to mainstream Islamic attitudes on assassination, but as an example of how certain groups gave a radical and violent turn to the basic Islamic association of religion and politics, and tried to use it for the accomplishment of their own purposes. The story of the medieval Assassins, who appeared in Iran and spread to the Syrian and Lebanese mountains, can be instructive. And of all the lessons to be learnt from the Assassins, perhaps the most important is their final and total failure.

  B. L.

  Princeton, New Jersey

  June 2002

  The Assassins

  1

  The Discovery of the Assassins

  In the year 1332, when King Philip VI of France was contemplating a new crusade to recapture the lost Holy Places of Christendom, a German priest called Brocardus composed a treatise offering the king guidance and advice for the conduct of this enterprise. Brocardus, who had spent some time in Armenia, devoted an important part of his treatise to the peculiar hazards of such an expedition to the East, and the precautions needed to guard against them. Among these dangers, said Brocardus, ‘I name the Assassins, who are to be cursed and fled. They sell themselves, are thirsty for human blood, kill the innocent for a price, and care nothing for either life or salvation. Like the devil, they transfigure themselves into angels of light, by imitating the gestures, garments, languages, customs and acts of various nations and peoples; thus, hidden in sheep’s clothing, they suffer death as soon as they are recognized. Since indeed I have not seen them, but know this of them only by repute or by true writings, I cannot reveal more, nor give fuller information. I cannot show how to recognize them by their customs or any other signs, for in these things they are unknown to me as to others also; nor can I show how to apprehend them by their name, for so execrable is their profession, and so abominated by all, that they conceal their own names as much as they can. I therefore know only one single remedy for the safeguarding and protection of the king, that in all the royal household, for whatever service, however small or brief or mean, none should be admitted, save those whose country, place, lineage, condition and person are certainly, fully and clearly known.’1

  For Brocardus, the Assassins are hired, secret murderers, of a peculiarly skilful and dangerous kind. Though naming them among the hazards of the East, he does not explicitly connect them with any particular place, sect, or nation, nor ascribe any religious beliefs or political purposes to them. They are simply ruthless and competent killers, and must be guarded against as such. Indeed, by the thirteenth century, the word Assassin, in variant forms, had already passed into European usage in this general sense of hired professional murderer. The Florentine chronicler Giovanni Villani, who died in I348, tells how the lord of Lucca sent ‘his assassins ’ (i suoi assassini) to Pisa to kill a troublesome enemy there. Even earlier, Dante, in a passing reference in the 19th canto of the Inferno, speaks of ‘the treacherous assassin’ (lo perfido assassin); his fourteenth-century commentator Francesco da Buti, explaining a term which for some readers at the time may still have been strange and obscure, remarks: ‘Assassino é colui che uccide altrui per danari ’–An assassin is one who kills others for money.2 Since then ‘assassin’ has become a common noun in most European languages. It means a murderer, more particularly one who kills by stealth or treachery, whose victim is a public figure and whose motive is fanaticism or greed.

  It was not always so. The word first appears in the chronicles of the Crusades, as the name of a strange group of Muslim sectaries in the Levant, led by a mysterious figure known as the Old Man of the Mountain, and abhorrent, by their beliefs and practices, to good Christians and Muslims alike. One of the earliest descriptions of the sect occurs in the report of an envoy sent to Egypt and Syria in II75 by the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa. ‘Note’, he says ‘that on the confines of Damascus, Antioch and Aleppo there is a certain race of Saracens in the mountains, who in their own vernacular are called Heyssessini, and in Roman segnors de montana. This breed of men live without law; they eat swine’s flesh against the law of the Saracens, and make use of all women without distinction, including their mothers and sisters. They live in the mountains and are well-nigh impregnable, for they withdraw into well-fortified castles. Their country is not very fertile, so that they live on their cattle. They have among them a Master, who strikes the greatest fear into all the Saracen princes both far and near, as well as the neighbouring Christian lords. For he has the habit of killing them in an astonishing way. The method by which this is done is as follows: this prince possesses in the mountains numerous and most beautiful palaces, surrounded by very high walls, so that none can enter except by a small and very well-guarded door. In these palaces he has many of the sons of his peasants brought up from early childhood. He has them taught various languages, as Latin, Greek, Roman, Saracen as well as many others. These young men are taught by their teachers from their earliest youth to their full manhood, that they must obey the lord of their land in all his words and commands; and that if they do so, he, who has power over all living gods, will give them the joys of paradise. They are also taught that they cannot be saved if they resist his will in anything. Note that, from the time when they are taken in as children, they see no one but their teachers and masters and receive no other instruction until they are summoned to the presence of the Prince to kill someone. When they are in the presence of the Prince, he asks them if they are willing to obey his commands, so that he may bestow paradise upon them. Whereupon, as they have been instructed, and without any objection or doubt, they throw themselves at his feet and reply with fervour, that they will obey him in all things that he may command. Thereupon the Prince gives each one of them a golden dagger and sends them out to kill whichever prince he has marked down.’3

  Writing a few years later, William, Archbishop of Tyre, included a brief account of the sect in his history of the Crusading states: ‘There is,’ he said, ‘in the province of Tyre, otherwise called Phoenicia, and in the diocese of Tortosa, a people who possess ten strong castles, with their dependent villages; their number, according to what we have often heard, is about 60,000 or more. It is their custom to instal their master and choose their chief, not by hereditary right, but solely by virtue of merit. Disdaining any other title of dignity, they called him the E
lder. The bond of submission and obedience that binds this people to their Chief is so strong, that there is no task so arduous, difficult or dangerous that any one of them would not undertake to perform it with the greatest zeal, as soon as the Chief has commanded it. If for example there be a prince who is hated or mistrusted by this people, the Chief gives a dagger to one or more of his followers. At once whoever receives the command sets out on his mission, without considering the consequences of the deed nor the possibility of escape. Zealous to complete his task, he toils and labours as long as may be needful, until chance gives him the opportunity to carry out his chief’s orders. Both our people and the Saracens call them Assissini; we do not know the origin of this name.’4

  In 1192 the daggers of the Assassins, which had already struck down a number of Muslim princes and officers, found their first Crusader victim – Conrad of Montferrat, king of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. This murder made a profound impression among the Crusaders, and most of the chroniclers of the Third Crusade have something to say about the dreaded sectaries, their strange beliefs, their terrible methods, and their redoubtable chief. ‘I shall now relate things about this elder’, says the German chronicler Arnold of Lübeck, ‘which appear ridiculous, but which are attested to me by the evidence of reliable witnesses. This Old Man has by his witchcraft so bemused the men of his country, that they neither worship nor believe in any God but himself. Likewise he entices them in a strange manner with such hopes and with promises of such pleasures with eternal enjoyment, that they prefer rather to die than to live. Many of them even, when standing on a high wall, will jump off at his nod or command, and, shattering their skulls, die a miserable death. The most blessed, so he affirms, are those who shed the blood of men and in revenge for such deeds themselves suffer death. When therefore any of them have chosen to die in this way, murdering someone by craft and then themselves dying so blessedly in revenge for him, he himself hands them knives which are, so to speak, consecrated to this affair, and then intoxicates them with such a potion that they are plunged into ecstasy and oblivion, displays to them by his magic certain fantastic dreams, full of pleasures and delights, or rather of trumpery, and promises them eternal possession of these things in reward for such deeds.’5