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We know now that the astonishing perspicacity and tenacity Ibn al-Khashâb [Note - the qadi (judge) of Aleppo] not only saved the city [Aleppo, Syria] from occupation, but also contributed more than anything else to preparing the way for the great leaders of jihâd against the invaders [Note - the Crusaders]. But the qadi would not leave to see these events. One day in the summer of 1125, as he was leaving the great mosque of the Aleppo after the midday prayer, a man disguised as an ascetic leapt upon him and sunk a dagger into his chest. It was an act of revenge by the Assassins, Ibn al-Khashâb had been the sect's most intransigent opponent, has spilled buckets of its adherents' blood, and had never repented of his actions. He must have know that some day he would pay with his life. For a third of a century, no enemy of the Assassins had ever managed to elude them.

This sect, the most terrifying every seen, had been founded in 1090 (C.E) by a man of immense culture, a devotee of poetry profoundly interested in the latest advances of science. Hasan ibn al-Sabbâh was born around 1048 in the city of Rayy, close by the site where the town of Tehran would be founded a dozen years later. Was he really, as legend claims, an inseparable companion of the young poet Omar Khayyam, himself a devotee of mathematics and astronomy? It is not known with certainty. On the other hand, the circumstances that led this brilliant man to dedicate his life to organising this sect are known in detail.

At this time of Hasan's birth, the Shi'i doctrine, to which he adhered, was dominant in Muslim Asia. Syria belonged to the Fatamids of Egypt, and another Shi'i dynasty, the Buwayhids, controlled Persia and dictated orders at will to the 'Abbasid caliph in Baghdad itself. During Hasan's youth, however, the situation was radically reversed. The Seljuks, upholders of Sunni orthodoxy, took control of the entire region. Shi'ism, triumphant only a short time before, was now only barely tolerated, often persecuted, doctrine.

Hasan, who grew up in a milieu of religious Persians, was indignant at this state of affairs. Towards 1071 he decided to settle in Egypt, the last bastion of Shi'ism. But what he discovered in the land of the Nile was hardly cause for elation. The aged Fatimid caliph al-Mustansir was even more of a puppet than his 'Abbasid rival. He no longer dared even to leave his palace without the permission of his Armenian vizier, Badr al-Jamâlî, the father and predecessor of al-Afdal. In Cairo Hasan met many religious fundamentalists who shared his apprehension and sought, like him, to reform the Shi'i caliphate and to take revenge on the Seljuks.

A movement took shape, headed by Nizâr, the older son of the caliph. The Fatamid heir, as pious as he was courageous, had no intention of abandoning himself to the pleasures of this court, nor of acting as a puppet in the hands of some vizier. When his elderly father died, which could not now be long, he meant to succeed him and, with the aid of Hasan and his friends, to inaugurate a new golden age for the Shi'is. A detailed plan was prepared, of which Hasan was the principal architect. The Persian militant would return to the heart of the Seljuk empire to pave the way for the reconquest that Nizâr would most assuredly undertake upon his accession to power.

Hasan succeeded beyond his wildest dreams, but the methods very different from those imagined by the virtuous Nizâr. In 1090 he took the fortress of Alamût by suprise. The bastion, the 'eagle's nest', was situated in a practically inaccessible region of the Albruz Mountains near the Caspian Sea. Once he commanded this inviolable sanctuary, Hasan set about establishing a politico-religious organisation whose effectiveness and spirit of discipline would be unequalled in all history.

All members, from novices to the grand master, were ranked to their level of knowledge, reliability and courage. They underwent intensive training courses of indoctrination as well as physical training. Hasan'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, familiarising 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 has to take place in the public, indeed before the largest crowd. That was why the preferred site was a mosque, the favourite day Friday, generally at noon. For Hasan, murder was not merely a means of disposing 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 fidâ'î (plural : fidâ'în, 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 hashashûn, or hashîshîn, 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 Hasan 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 murder? Or did he instead rely on their blind faith? Whatever the answer, merely to list the hypotheses is to pay tribute of the exceptional organiser Hasan 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 an 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 Turkish warriors, the architect of the renaissance of Sunni power and of the struggle against Shi'ism, was an old vizier who name itself evoked his deeds: Nizâm al-Mulk, or 'Order of the Realm'. On 14 October 1492 one of Hasan's adherents killed him with a sword-stroke. When Nizâm al-Mulk was assissinated, Ibn al-Athîr wrote, the state disintegrated. Indeed, the Seljuk empire never recovered its unity. Its history would now be punctuated not by further conquests, but by the interminable wars of succession. 'Mission Accomplished', Hasan may well have told his comrades in Egypt. The road was now open to a Fatamid reconquest: it was up to Nizâr. In Cairo, however, the insurrection has run aground. Al-Afdal, who inherited the vizierate from his father in 1094, mercilessly crushed the associates of Nizâr, who himself was buried alive.

Hasan thuse found himself in an unforeseen situation. He has 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, craved up as it was into a multitude of miniscule rival states? The sect has only to establish a base, to play one city against another, one emir against his brother, and it would survive until the Fatamid caliphate emerged from its torpor.

Hasan sent a Persian preacher into Syria, an enigmatic 'physcian-astrologer' who settled in Aleppo and managed to win the confidence of Ridwân [note - The King of Aleppo]. Adherents began to converge on the city, to preach their doctrine, to form cells. To preserve the friendship of the Seljuk kin, 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 immediatly sent Ridwân a new Persian adviser, Abû Tahir, a goldsmith. His influence soon become more overwhelming than that of his predecessor. Ridwân fell completely under his spell, and according to Kamâl al-Dîn, 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 though the king's entourage.

But the Assassins were hated precisely because of their power. Ibn al-Khashâb 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 [Note - The Crusaders]. However paradoxical it may seem, the accusation was justified. When the Franj [Note - This word is used to describe the Western invaders throughout the book] arrived, the Assassins, who had barely begun to settle in Syria, were called Bâtinis, '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-Khashâb, has no sympathy for the disciples of Hasan because of their break with the Fatamid caliphate, which, however weak, remained the formal protector of the Shi'is of the Arab world.

Detested and persecuted by all the 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-Afdal, the murderer of Nizâr. There is no doubt that Ridwân's outrageously conciliatory attitude towards the Occidentals [Note - The Crusaders] was due in large part to the counsel of the Bâtinis.

As far as Ibn al-Khashâb was concerned, the connivance between the Assassins and Franj amounted to treason. He acted accordingly. During the massacres that followed Ridwân's death at the end of 1113, the Bâtinis were tracked down street by street and house by house. Some were lynched by mobs, others leapt to their deaths from the ramparts of the city walls. Nearly two hundred members of the sect perished in this manner, among them Abû Tahrir the goldsmith. Nevertheless, Ibn al-Qalânisi reports that several of managed to flee and sought refuge among the Franj or dispersed in the countryside.

Even though Ibn al-Khashâb has thus deprived the Assassins their major bastion in Syria, their astonishing career has only just begun. Drawing lessons from their failure, the sect altered its tactics. Hasan's new envoy to Syria, a Persian progagandist by the name of Bahram, decided to call a temporary halt to all spectacular actions and to return to careful and discreet organisation 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 organised a network powerful enough to contemplate emerging from clandestinity. He found an excellent protector in Ridwân's replacement.

One day, says Ibn al-Qalânisi, Bahram arrived in Damacus, 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 presonality of the Syrian metropolis, the vizier Tâhir al-Mazdaghâni, came to an understanding with Bahram, although he did not belong to the sect, and helped him to plant his malfeasance wherever he willed.

In fact, despite the death of Hasan ibn al-Sabbâh in his Alamut retreat in 1142, there was sharp recrudescence of the activity of the Assassins. The murder of Ibn al-Khashâb was not an isolated act. A year later, another 'turbaned resistor' 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 Muslims world's leading religious authorities. It was announced from Iraq that the qâdi of qâdis of Baghdad, the splendor of Islam, Abû Sa'ad al-Harawi, has been attacked by Bâtinis in the great mosque of Hamadân. They had stabbed him to death and fled immediately, leaving no clue or trace behind them. The crime aroused great indignation in Damascus, where al-Harawi had lived for may years. The activities of the Assassins were now by provoking mounting hostility, especially in religious circles. The best of the faithful were furious, but they held their tongue, because the Bâtinis had begun killing those who resited them and supporting those who approved their aberrations. No one dared to criticise them publicly, neither emir, nor vizier, nor sultan.

The 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-Qalânisi in astonishment, the emir has 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 Bâtinis 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 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 unraveled. A few months after the death of al-Borsoki, his son, who succeeded him, was in turn assassinated. Four rival emirs then contented for power in Aleppo, and Ibn al-Khashâb was no longer on the scene to maintain a minimum of cohesion. In autumn 1127, as the city sank into anarchy, the young son of the great Bohemund (Note - One of the leaders of the Crusaders), a huge blond man of eighteen who had just arrived from his homeland to take possession of this 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.

This 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-Mazdaghâni, 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 to the Franj. But the reprieve was to be brief. By 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 Bûri 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-Athîr 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.