Alamut fortification in Iran Photo by Payampak |
By
Heidi Noroozy
In
1930, British explorer and travel writer, Freya Stark, undertook an unusual
journey across Persia, from the western province of Lurestan to the Caspian
Sea. Her travels took her through a remote and as yet unmapped region of the Alborz
Mountains called the Alamut Valley, better known to Westerners as the Valley of
the Assassins.
Nearly
900 years before Freya Stark’s expedition, Alamut was home to a heretical sect
of Shia mystics called the Nizari Ismailis. Their leader, Hassan-i Sabbah,
captured Alamut Castle in 1090 and eventually expanded his territory to include
50 fortresses tucked away among the remote mountain peaks.
The
Nizaris were a small band of men and their families surrounded by hostile
enemies, and Hassan developed a strategy for dealing with threats to his power
without sacrificing too many of his own soldiers. He would order them to kill enemy
leaders, both political and religious, using stealth, cunning, and
ruthlessness. Daggers were the murder weapons of choice, and often the Nizaris
would leave a knife on the pillow of a sleeping target as a warning. This band
of militant fanatics is long gone now (though the form of Islam that they
followed is still practiced in parts of the Middle East and Central Asia), but
they’ve left behind a chilling legacy: the word “assassin.”
Linguists
disagree on how the term, “assassin,” came into English and other European
languages, although most scholars attribute the word’s origin to the Nizari
Ismailis, aka the Alamut Assassins. One theory comes from an account by Marco
Polo, who visited Alamut in the 13th century, not long after the
sect and their stronghold were destroyed by Mongol invaders.
Castles in Alamut & Rudbar regions, Iran Photo by Jolle |
In
his account of the trip, Marco Polo described a ritual in which Hassan-i Sabbah
would give his young followers a drink laced with hashish that put them to
sleep. He’d then place them in a beautiful garden filled with lovely maidens
and wake them up, telling them they were in paradise. Later, when he sent them
out on a mission, he’d promise them that if they were successful they’d return
to paradise. According to legend, this practice earned the Assassins the
nickname, hashishiyyeen, an Arab term
meaning “hashish-eater.”
The
problem with this theory is that neither Ismaeli nor other Muslim texts offer
any evidence that the Assassins ever took hashish, a drug made from the resin
of the cannabis plant and not usually administered in liquid form. Marco Polo’s
account may have been influenced by the reports of Crusader chroniclers, who
encountered the Ismailis on their holy wars. In any case, it’s unlikely that the
explorer ever met any Assassins since their stronghold had been destroyed in
1256, when he was only two years old (and 132 years after Hassan-i Sabbeh’s
death) .
Another
theory is that the Arabic term, “hashish-eater,” had a different, more
figurative connotation at the time. It meant “outlaw,” or “disreputable
person,” and was likely applied to the Assassins by their enemies and not by
the Nizaris themseves.
Hassan
and his men called themselves the “asasayoon,”
or “followers of the foundation (asas)
of faith,” which leads to the third theory, that “assassin” derives from this
word.
Siege of Alamut Persian Miniature |
Although
this etymology sounds plausible, my money is still on “hashishiyyeen” in the
figurative sense as the origin of the word. Usually it’s the victors who write
the final chapter of any history, and it makes sense that the Alamut Assassins’
enemies would continue to call them outlaws decades or even centuries after
they met their end.
Whatever
the real origin of the word, “assassin” entered European languages during the
Middle Ages. The Crusaders were frequent targets of Nizari attacks, including
Conrad of Montferrat, who was assassinated shortly before being crowned King of
Jerusalem. The first Western texts to document the use of the term are the chronicles
of these holy wars.
Today,
all that’s left of the Alamut Assassins are their crumbling fortresses, a
tangle of legends, and a word that still chills the heart.
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