Holy Terror: The Rise of the Order of Assassins
Jefferson Gray - Feb 2010
For almost two centuries, from 1090 until 1273, the Order of Assassins played a singular and sinister role in the Middle East. A small Shiite sect more properly known as the Nizari Ismailis, the Assassins were relatively few, geographically dispersed, and despised as heretics by both the Sunni Muslim majority and even by most other Shiites. By conventional standards, the Assassins should have been no match for the superior conventional military power of any of their many enemies. But near the end of the 11th century, the charismatic and ruthless Hasan-i Sabbah forged this small, persecuted sect into one of the most lethally effective terrorist groups the world has ever known. Even the most powerful and carefully guarded rulers of the age—the Abbasid and Fatimid caliphs, the sultans and viziers of the Great Seljuk and Ayyubid empires, the princes of the Crusader states, and emirs who ruled important cities like Damascus, Homs, and Mosul—lived in dread of the chameleonlike Assassin agents. Known as a fida’i (one who risks his life voluntarily, from the Arabic word for “sacrifice”; the plural in Arabic is fidaiyn, or the present-day fedayeen), such an agent might spend months or even years stalking and infiltrating an enemy of his faith before plunging a dagger into the victim’s chest, often in a very public place. Perhaps most terrifying, the Assassins chose not only a close and personal manner of killing but performed it implacably, refusing to flee afterward and appearing to welcome their own swift death.
Fanatical and disciplined, Hasan-i Sabbah and his successors were brilliant practitioners of asymmetric warfare. They developed a means of attack that negated most of their enemies’ advantages while requiring the Assassins to hazard only a small number of their own fighters. As with any effective form of deterrence, the Assassins’ targeted killings of hostile political, military, and religious leaders eventually produced a stable and lasting balance of power between them and their enemies, reducing the level of conflict and loss of life on both sides.
PERFECTIBILISTS: The 18th Century Bavarian Order of the Illuminati
The Ascendancy of the Scientific Dictatorship
Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism
Fire in the Minds of Men: Origins of the Revolutionary Faith
America's Secret Establishment: An Introduction to the Order of Skull & Bones
April 3rd, 2010 at 5:19 pm
Enjoyed that article.
April 3rd, 2010 at 9:20 pm
Me too!
July 18th, 2012 at 5:00 pm
Some false information here. Hasan wasn’t the founder, just a leader that became corrupt and the first one stupid enough to get the group noticed. And the word assassin actually originates from the word asasyun which means followers of the faith or keepers of secrets. And only traitors were sent into areas without backup. The original group was non religious and then decided to be monotheistic (Christianity, Islam, and then back to Christianity).
July 19th, 2012 at 3:41 am
> originates from the word asasyun
There’s no scholarly agreement on this. “Asasiyun” is in fact but one of many etymological interpretations. Dr Farhad Daftary, for instance - an Ismaili academic - rejects it, and prefers instead “Arsasides” or “Arsacides,” because the original tribe lived in the city of Arsacia.
July 19th, 2012 at 10:13 pm
Scholars can dispute it all they want but I’ve got an oral history from multiple ancestors that were involved in the Assassins that say otherwise. And oral tradition doesn’t change for thousands of years.