The Assassins

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-inchief 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, io and i i ; the British Museum, plates i and 5; Mr S. I. Asad, plates 6 and ig; the Suleymaniye 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 Isluni. In the French translationthe 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 selfimmolation, 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 elites 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'an 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. That 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.

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