“When the Old Man wants to kill a great lord, he chooses the young men who are most brave (…) he sends them telling them (…) that if he disappeared, heaven was reserved for them.”
With these words, the Venetian explorer Marco Polo described in his “Book of Wonders” a group of Muslims who decades before spread terror in the Middle East both among Christians and among the followers of the prophet Muhammad: the Hassassins or Hashshashin.
From the first term comes the word murderer, which we use to refer to someone who kills another person.
One of the great blows attributed to this order occurred on April 28, 1192 in the city of Tire (present-day Lebanon). That day, the Italian nobleman Conrad of Monferrat, who was one of the leaders of the third crusade, was preparing to celebrate his recent election as king of Jerusalem.
However, the celebration did not take place. According to chronicles of the time, two messengers managed to reach the nobleman with a letter and while he was reading it the subjects took out daggers and stabbed him.
And although it was never clarified who sent the attackers, it was established that they were members of the Assassins sect, which over time has inspired novelists, film and television directors; and more recently to the creators of the Assassin's Creed video game saga.
A product of Islamic schisms
The origins of this group date back to the schism that Islam suffered in 632 AD, after the death of the prophet Muhammad, where differences regarding who should succeed him as imam (leader) resulted in the division of what we know today as the Shiites and Sunnis, the professor of Arab and Islamic Studies at the Autonomous University of Madrid, Ignacio Gutiérrez de Terán, explained to BBC Mundo.
By the 9th century the Shiites had expanded, but there was a new disagreement over leadership and there arose a branch called the Ismailists, in honor of the Imam Ismail ibn Jafar.
This last group also suffered its own split due to disputes over who should lead it and a part gathered around a prince named Nizar, who after taking power in Alexandria (Egypt) was assassinated shortly after by the followers of his younger brother, the which ruled in Cairo.
However, the followers of the murdered Nizar, instead of accepting the new order, moved east towards Persia; and there they propagated their beliefs, which were not well regarded by the Sunnis or the Shiites.
The Nizaris incorporated elements of Greek philosophy and esotericism into their practice of Islam.
To escape persecution the group developed a network of missionaries. One of these preachers captured a young Persian named Hasan-i Sabbah in the 11th century, who converted and also formed a secret society: the Hassassins.
“The Nizaris are a reaction to this colonization attempt by the Arabs, it is a Persian autochthonism compared to other more Arab currents,” the professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Seville (Spain), Emilio González Ferrín, explained to BBC Mundo. .
“The Hassassins, for their part, are a radicalization (of the Nizaris), it is a social current that had a religious excuse. And before being exterminated they can only think of becoming a terrorist group,” said the expert.
In the mountains
The Nizaris tried to create their own State but failed. Then, Hasan-i Sabbah chose to retreat to the mountains of Iran and seized the impregnable castle of Alamut, located in the Elburz mountain range (about 100 kilometers north of the city of Tehran).
This fortress was the head of a network of fortifications that the Nizaris had and that extended to present-day Syria and Lebanon. From there the founder of the sect, who would later be known as “the old man of the mountain,” sought to “influence decisively the course of politics in the Islamic states,” explained Gutiérrez de Terán.
To achieve his goals Hasan-i Sabbah formed a highly trained militia, which he used to attack specific targets in the Muslim states and dynasties and also in the Crusader territories.
“Since they are not allowed to seize power nor do they have the strength to take it or control it, then they will seek to hit it, through surgical operations; that is, they go and kill someone, regardless of whether they can escape or not,” González Ferrín added.
The historian explained that the movement led by Hasan-i Sabbah was not popular or mass, but was “extremely intellectual, with a religious inclination that generated fundamentalism.”
There are many versions and myths about the militia. Muslim sources derogatorily referred to its members, whose real name was fedayeen (those who sacrifice themselves for others), as hashshashin, an Arabic word used to identify people who consumed hashish.
Why did they begin to be known like this? “It is said that Hasan-i Sabbah, during training, told his militiamen about paradise and then intoxicated them with narcotic leaves, which they drank, chewed or ingested in any way; and from there he assigned them to carry out the murders they had to commit.” said Gutiérrez de Terán.
However, González Ferrín believes that this version is incorrect and that it spread due to a lack of understanding of the tactics used by the group and attempts to discredit it.
“Anyone who's ever tried a joint knows that the last thing you want to do after smoking it is go kill someone,” he said.
“It is believed that they were drugged, because they were kamizakes, but if that was the case it would surely be a substance other than hashish,” added the historian.
González Ferrín also indicated that there are other possible etymologies for the term Hassassin and one of them is “fundamentalist.”
An elite body
The purchase or kidnapping of peasant children were some of the ways in which Hasan-i Sabbah and his successors nourished the ranks of the militia.
Once recruited, the new members were instructed not only in hand-to-hand combat, but also in the language, culture and customs of those towns or cities where they were going to execute their blows.
“They were a kind of ninjas, fighters who knew how to sneak among the people,” said González Ferrín.
Gutiérrez de Terán spoke in similar terms, describing them as “very well-versed and cultured people, who knew the traditions and even the way of speaking and behaving of the inhabitants of those places where they were going to perpetrate their attacks.”
Precisely the infiltration capacity of the assassins, together with their precision and coldness, made them famous and feared.
“Murderers must be cursed and must be fled from. They sell themselves, they thirst for human blood, they kill innocents for a price and care about nothing, not even salvation,” wrote the Anglo-American historian Bernard Lewis, in his book “The Assassins: A Radical Sect of Islam”, where he cites the story of a German priest in the 14th century.
“Like the devil, they are transfigured into angels of light, imitating the gestures, clothing, languages, customs and acts of various nations and peoples; thus, hidden in sheep's clothing, they suffer death as soon as they are recognized,” he described them. religious, called Brocardus, according to Lewis.
The professor at the University of Seville, for his part, did not hesitate to describe the members of this order as “the first terrorists in history.” Because? Because many of their actions were carried out in broad daylight and in public with the purpose of instilling fear.
“If a governor went with his escort through a market, out of nowhere a murderer appeared, took out a knife and cut his throat, regardless of whether he came out alive or not,” he said.
The death of the murderer was even desirable, because his base of operations remained secret, Gutiérrez de Terán added.
Blood, the price of heaven
To get his fedayeen willing to sacrifice themselves, Hasan-i Sabbah subjected them to religious indoctrination in Alamut.
The castle had been conditioned to facilitate this instruction, according to Marco Polo in his book.
“(Hasan-i Sabbah) had built between two mountains, in a valley, the most beautiful garden that had ever been seen. In it were the best fruits of the earth (…) There was in the center of the garden a fountain, through whose pipes passed the wine, through another the milk, through another the honey and through another the water,” wrote the Venetian explorer.
“He had taken to (the garden) the most beautiful maidens in the world, who knew how to play all the instruments and sang like angels, and the Old Man (of the mountain) made his subjects believe that this was Paradise,” it reads. in the “Book of Wonders.”
According to the version of the European adventurer, “no man entered the garden, except those who were to become murderers.”
Hasan-i Sabbah, according to Marco Polo, confined the trained combatants in the orchard so that they could enjoy the pleasures therein.
However, when the leader had a mission for someone, he would drug them and take them out; and when the chosen one woke up he told him that if he wanted to return to “Paradise”, which was inspired by the preaching of Muhammad, he had to fulfill the assigned task.
And the chosen ones carried out the assignment because “by their will no one would leave the Paradise where they were,” Polo concluded.
Almost two centuries of famous hits
The Nizari order managed to survive for 166 years, until an enemy from the north wiped them out: the Mongols.
“The Mongols were an enormous threat, much greater even than the Crusaders, since they were more savage and came from a place closer than the West. And, therefore, the Nizaris tried to reach some kind of agreement with them, but they were unable to do so. “explained Gutiérrez de Terán.
The formidable army of Hulagu Khan, grandson of the feared Genghis Khan, rushed upon the hitherto impregnable fortress and razed it to the ground. Some versions maintain that Hulagu Khan believed that the assassins had killed an uncle of his.
But before this happened, many Muslim and Christian leaders and nobles perished at the hands of their fighters.
One of those who was targeted by the assassins, but managed to save his life, was Sultan Saladin, one of the most important figures in Islam, for being the one who recovered Jerusalem for the Muslims in the 12th century.
“Saladin carried out a series of campaigns to expel the crusaders, but he realized that to achieve this he must also put an end to some Muslim states and kingdoms, which often collaborated with the crusaders. During that campaign he targeted Masyaf, a Nizari fortress (located in modern-day Syria),” Gutiérrez de Terán said.
The response of the Nizaris was immediate and in 1185 they sent assassins to end his life.
“The assassins infiltrated Saladin's camp dressed as his soldiers (…) and tried to kill him in his tent, but they did not succeed because he was wearing a mesh jacket and under his cap he had a kind of steel helmet,” added the professor of the Autonomous University of Madrid.
King Edward I of England, who participated in the IX Crusade, also narrowly escaped death under the sword of one of these fedayeen in 1272.
This type of operations and the fact that over time they offered their services to both Muslims and Christians, in exchange for large sums of money, ended up forging the image of hitmen that has lasted throughout the centuries.
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BBC-NEWS-SRC: https://www.bbc.com/mundo/articles/cedpyg5l7e7o, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-12-17 04:20:05
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