The Assassins (16 page)

There seems to have been some difference of opinion among the Ismailis, between those who thought it wise to surrender and get the best terms they could from Hulegu, and those who preferred to fight to the end. Rukn al-Din himself was clearly of the first opinion, and was no doubt encouraged in this policy by advisers such as the astronomer Nasir al-Din Tusi, who hoped - with reason - that after the surrender he would be able to make his own accommodation with the Mongols and embark on a new career under their aegis. It was Tusi who, we are told, advised the Imam to surrender on the grounds that the stars were inauspicious - Tusi again who went on Rukn al-Din's final embassy from the fortress of Maymundiz to the camp of the besiegers, to negotiate the capitulation. Hulegu agreed to receive Rukn al-Din, his family and dependents and his treasure. As Juvayni puts it, `he ... offered his treasures as a token of his allegiance. These were not so splendid as fame had reported them but, such as they were, they were brought out of the castle. The greater part thereof was distributed by the King among his troops.'3 s

Rukn al-Din was well received by Hulegu, who even indulged his personal whims. An interest in Bactrian camels bought a gift of Ioo females of the species. The gift was insufficient; Rukn alDin was interested in camel-fighting, and could not wait for them to breed. He therefore indented for 3o he-camels. A still more striking benefaction was permission to marry a Mongol girl with whom he fell in love and for whom he declared his willingness, not wholly figuratively, to give up his kingdom.3 6

Hulegu's interest in Rukn al-Din was obvious. The Ismailis still held some castles, and could give a lot of trouble. The Ismaili Imam, urging them to surrender, was a valuable addition to the Mongol court. His family, household and servants, with his personal effects and animals, were billeted in Qazvin (the comments of the Qazvinis are not recorded), and he himself accompanied Hiilegii on his further expeditions.

Rukn al-Din earned his keep. On his instructions, most of the fortresses in Rudbar, near Girdkuh, and in Quhistan, surrendered, thus saving the Mongols the immense cost and uncertain fortunes of siege and assault. Their number is put at about a hundred - certainly an exaggeration. In two places the commandants refused to surrender, disregarding the orders of their own Imam - perhaps in the belief that he was acting in taqiyya, under duress. These two were the great Rudbar strongholds of Alamut and Lamasar. Mongol armies invested both fortresses, and after a few days the commandant of Alamut changed his mind. `The garrison, having cast a glance at the consequences of the matter and the vagaries of Fate, sent a messenger to sue for quarter and beg for favourable treatment. Rukn al-Din intervened on their behalf and the King was pleased to pass over their crimes. And at the end of Dhu'l-Qa'da of that year [beginning of December 1256] all the inmates of that seminary of iniquity and nest of Satan came down with all their goods and belongings. Three days later the army climbed up to the castle and seized whatever those people had been unable to carry off. They quickly set fire to the various buildings and with the broom of destruction cast the dust thereof to the winds, levelling them with their foundations.'; 7 Lamasar held out for another year, and finally submitted to the Mongols in 1258. In Girdkuh, the Ismailis, rejecting Rukn al-Din's orders, were able to retain control of the fortress, and were not finally overcome until 1270.

The surrender of most of the castles made Rukn al-Din unnecessary to the Mongols; the resistance of Lamasar and Girdkuh showed that he was useless. Orders were sent to the Mongol officers in Qazvin to kill the Imam's family and attendants; he himself, at his own request, went on the long journey to the Mongol capital at Karakorum, where the Khan refused to receive him. `There was no need to bring him on so long a journey,' said the Khan, `for our laws are well-known.' Let Rukn al-Din return, and see that the remaining castles were surrendered and dismantled; then he might be permitted to make obeisance. In fact he was not given the opportunity. On the edge of the Khangay range, on the way back to Persia, he was led away from the road, on the pretext of going to a feast, and was murdered. `He and his followers were kicked to a pulp and then put to the sword; and of him and his stock no trace was left, and he and his kindred became but a tale on men's lips and a tradition in the world.'38

The extirpation of the Ismailis in Persia was not quite as thorough as Juvayni suggests. In the eyes of the sectaries, Rukn al-Din's small son succeeded him as Imam on his death, and lived to sire a line of Imams from which, in due course, the Aga Khans emerged in the nineteenth century. For a while the Ismailis remained active, and in 1275 were even able briefly to recapture Alamut. Their cause was however lost, and from this time onwards they survived only as a minor sect in the Persian-speaking lands, scattered through eastern Persia, Afghanistan, and what is now Soviet Central Asia. In Rudbar they have disappeared entirely.

The destruction of Alamut, and the final humbling of Ismaili power, are vividly depicted by Juvayni. `In that breeding-ground of heresy in the Rudbar of Alamut the home of the wicked adherents of Hasan-i Sabbah... there remains not one stone of the foundations upon another. And in that flourishing abode of innovation the Artist of Eternity Past wrote with the pen of violence upon the portico of each one['s dwelling] the verse: "These their empty houses are empty ruins" [Qur'an, xxvii, 531. And in the market-place of those wretches' kingdom the muezzin Destiny has uttered the cry of "Away then with the wicked people!" [Qur'an, xxiii, 43]. Their luckless womenfolk, like their empty religion, have been utterly destroyed. And the gold of those crazy, double-dealing counterfeiters which appeared to be unalloyed has proved to be base lead.

`Today, thanks to the glorious fortune of the World-Illuminating King, if an assassin still lingers in a corner he plies a woman's trade; wherever there is a da'i there is an announcer of death; and every rafiq has become a thrall. The propagators of Ismailism have fallen victims to the swordsmen of Islam.... The kings of the Greeks and Franks, who turned pale for fear of these accursed ones, and paid them tribute, and were not ashamed of that ignominy, now enjoy sweet slumber. And all the inhabitants of the world, and in particular the Faithful, have been relieved of their evil machinations and unclean beliefs. Nay, the whole of mankind, high and low, noble and base, share in this rejoicing. And compared with these histories that of Rustam the son of Dastan has become but an ancient fable.'39

`So was the world cleansed which had been polluted by their evil. Wayfarers now ply to and fro without fear or dread or the inconvenience of paying a toll and pray for the [continued] fortune of the happy King who uprooted their foundations and left no trace of any one of them. And in truth that act was the balm of Muslim wounds and the cure to the disorders of the Faith. Let those who shall come after this age and era know the extent of the mischief they wrought and the confusion they cast into the hearts of men. Such as were on terms of agreement with them, whether kings of former times or contemporary rulers, went in fear and trembling [for their lives] and [such as were] hostile to them were day and night in the straits of prison for dread of their scoundrelly minions. It was a cup that had been filled to overflowing; it seemed as a wind that had died. "This is a warning for those who reflect," [Qur'an, vi, i i6], and may God do likewise unto all tyrants!'4°

The Old Man
of the Mountain

While Hasan-i Sabbah was still ruling in the castle of Alamut, and the words and weapons of his emissaries were bringing his message to the people and princes of Iran, a few of his followers set out on a long and hazardous journey, through enemy country, to the West. Their destination was Syria; their purpose to take the New Preaching to the old Ismailis in that country, and to extend the war against the Seljuq power, which had recently enveloped all the lands from Asia Minor to the borders of Egypt.

The New Preaching had arisen in Iran, and its exponents had won their first great success in lands of Iranian speech and culture - in western and eastern Persia, and in Central Asia. For their first attempt at expansion to the West, Syria was an obvious choice, Iraq, immediately to the west of Persia, held few opportunities. No doubt there were Ismaili sympathizers in the Iraqi cities, but the flat river valleys offered little scope for the Ismaili strategy of penetration, entrenchment and attack. Syria, however, was a different matter. Between Taurus and Sinai, a broken landscape of mountains and valleys and deserts sheltered a population of great diversity, with strong local traditions of independence. Unlike the neighbouring river-valley societies of Iraq and Egypt, Syria had rarely known political unity. The pattern was one of fragmentation - of sectarian and regional particularism, and of recurring conflict and change. Though their common speech was Arabic, the Syrians were divided into many faiths and sects, including several with extremist Shiite beliefs. The first Shi'ite pretender had appeared in Syria in the eighth century; by the end of the ninth and the beginning of the tenth century the hidden Imams of the Ismailis could count on sufficient local support to make Syria the seat of their secret headquarters and the scene of their first bid for power. The establishment of the Fatimid Caliphate in Egypt, and its expansion into Asia, brought Syria under intermittent Ismaili rule in the late tenth and eleventh centuries, and opened the country to Ismaili propaganda and instruction.

Besides the overt Ismailis, there were other sects near enough to Ismailism in doctrine and outlook to make them a promising recruiting ground for the emissaries from Alamut. Such for example were the Druzes of Mount Lebanon and the adjoining areas, a dissident Ismaili sect which had only recently broken away from the main body, and had not yet fallen into the ossified exclusiveness of later times. Another group of potential supporters was the Nusayris, also called Alawis, Twelver Shiite in origin, but much affected by extremist ideas. These were established in the hill country east and north-east of Lattakia, and perhaps also, at that date, in Tiberias and the Jordan valley.

The time, as well as the place, was propitious. The first Turcoman bands are reported to have entered Syria in Io64. During the seventies of the eleventh century first Turkish freebooters, and then regular Seljuq armies invaded the country, and soon the whole of Syria, apart from a coastal strip retained by the Fatimids, was under Seljuq rule or suzerainty. The overlord was Tutush, the brother of the Great Sultan Malikshah.

In io95 Tutush was killed in battle in Persia in the course of a fraternal struggle for the supreme Sultanate. The Syrian pattern of regional fragmentation and the Seljuq tradition of dynastic dispute combined to shatter his kingdom in pieces. Syria was again split into small states, now ruled by Seljuq princes and officers; the most important were Tutush's sons Ridwan and Duqaq, who held the rival cities of Aleppo and Damascus.

It was at this moment of disarray and mounting conflict that a new force entered the country - the Crusaders. Coming through Antioch in the North, they advanced swiftly down the Syrian coast, where there was no power capable of resisting them, and established four Latin states based on Edessa, Antioch, Tripoli and Jerusalem.

The extension of Seljuq power to Syria brought with it many of the problems of social change and tension already familiar in the East. The shock of Latin invasion and conquest can only have added to the distress and discouragement of the Syrians, and made them more ready to welcome the bearers of a message of messianic hope - especially those whose existing beliefs prepared them for the acceptance of such a message. The Fatimids of Cairo still had followers in Syria, who held to the Old Preaching of Isrnailism - but the ignominious weakness of the Cairo regime, and its failure to resist either the Turkish or the Latin menace, must have led many to transfer their allegiance to the more active, more militant and, so it seemed, more successful branch. Some of the Shiites and most of the Sunnis seem to have remained faithful to their old loyalties; but there were many who rallied to the new force, which alone seemed to offer an effective challenge to the invaders and rulers of the country.

From the start, the agents of Alamut in Syria tried to use the same methods and achieve the same results as their comrades in Persia. Their aim was to seize or otherwise acquire fortresses, for use as bases in a campaign of terror. To this end, they tried to invoke and direct the zeal of the faithful, especially in mountain areas; at the same time, they did not disdain the discreet cooperation of princes, where a limited and temporary alliance seemed expedient to both sides.

Despite such help, and despite occasional successes, the Ismailis found their task in Syria much harder than it had been in Persia - perhaps in part because they were Persians, working in an alien surrounding. Almost half a century of determined effort was needed before they were able to attain their first objective, and consolidate a group of strongholds in central Syria, in the mountain area known then as the Jabal Bahra', and today as the Jabal Ansariyya. Their leaders, as far as they are known, were all Persians, sent from Alamut and acting under the orders of Hasan-i Sabbah and his successors. Their struggle to establish themselves falls into three main phases. During the first two phases, ending in 1113 and 1130, they operated successively from Aleppo and Damascus, with the connivance of the rulers of those cities, and tried to establish themselves in adjoining areas. Both ended in failure and disaster. During the third, which began in 1131, they were at last able to gain and fortify the bases which they needed.