Hassan Ibn Sabbah

The Assassins' cult is a good example of the diversity of unconventional means to reach and build a parallel political power of a certain magnitude. Hassan Sabbah was neither prince nor king. He didn't rule over any country or nation in particular, he was just the leader of an islamic religious cult: the Ismailis. Even though the origin and the base of his power are not a nation-state, the Old Man of the Mountain and his Assassins will have a great influence in the Middle East from the XIth till the end of the XIIIth century.

It is first through its organization as a secret society that the Ismaili Cult becomes a possible instrument of Power conquest for Hassan ben Sabbah. In Persia around 1090, Hassan gives a purpose, a new form and impulse to the sect. Its new name (Assassins) is derived from the Arabic <<hachachin>> (smokers of hashish), then Hassan will have all his enemies assassinated by faithful disciples intoxicated with hashish.

During the Crusades, the supreme leader of the sect will be known as the <<Old Man of the Mountain>>. Almost all the organization will be destroyed in 1256 by the Mongol army of Hulagu.

The Assassins established a pirate-state without precedent in history and terrorized Western Asia for more than a century. Their name refers to a sect formed of fanatics that systematically make attempts on the life of political and religious prominent personalities.

The most remarkable thing is the devotion of Hassan's disciples that would kill others or themselves on a simple wave on his part. They are called fidawis or fidaïs (faithful). This leads us to talk about the strange power that Hassan exerts on his men. He binds to him religious fanatics because he knows how to excite and elate them with the taking of an intoxicating potion: the hashish. At the sound of his voice, they rush to assassinate the designated victims. Hashish throws the fidawis into a delirium, during which they believe themselves to be at the doorstep of paradise.

Hassan had large and magnificent gardens set up with flowers, fruits, trees, fountains and beautiful young girls, and walls built around them. He would have young followers carried there, when they were asleep and totally intoxicated with hashish, and they would awake believing to be in paradise.

Later on, fully awaken and having been brought back to their master, they would hear him say that he had given them a foretaste of heavenly happiness. These young faithful are ready for anything to go back to such a place of delights. They are ready to kill and to die. Having made the attempt, carried out the assassination, they don't even try to get away.

They stay on the scene and wait to be caught. They don't resist arrest, bear the pain and withstand torture. They even die smiling. Such fanaticism on the part of the Assassins arouse admiration and fear in all the Muslim world. One fears what one does not understand. The intensity of the fidawis' fanaticism and their defiance of death appear strange to many an observer. What secret does Hassan Sabbah hold ?

The first victims are the great Vizir Nizam-al-Mulk and the sultan Melik-Shah. Other important victims are the vizir Fakhr-el-Mulk, the vizir Achmed Nizam-Eddin, the sultan Mohammed Tapar, the caliph of Egypt Abu Ali Mansur and the caliph of Bagdad, el-Mustarshid. The total contempt of death showed by the <<dagger men>> establishes a rule of terror in Asia. The stabbing campaigns of the Ismailis had serious consequences. Army generals, Heads of State, famous people were falling, victims of assassination-attempts that were nothing short of suicide-missions. Thus they would leave for a time a province defenseless, a country without leaders, or cause by their sudden death the interruption of some important project. It is very difficult to stop on time murderers that are not afraid of death. Each assassin will give his life with joy as long as it could be useful to the sect; that is, he will do the impossible to kill the person marked for death by Hassan or his successors.

Another cause than hashish could explain the fanaticism of the Ismailis; it is the ideological indoctrination, the teachings given to beginners and other members of the cult. There are nine degrees of initiation. The first two steps make a strict believer of the average member and an austere keeper of the faith. Up to the third degree, initiation tends to strengthen the devotion and obedience to Islam's religious Law. A majority of Ismailis do not go further than the second degree.

Once he has reached the fourth degree, the convert or follower is not a Muslim anymore. Each upper degree make him stray a little more from the orthodoxy. The fifth degree takes him away from every revealed religion. After reaching the ninth degree, the initiate abandons all beliefs and submission to anything else than his own reason. He is left to himself and his own devices.

A double discourse (double talk ?) rules over all activities of the sect. While the majority of its members are Muslims and believers, the leaders themselves are unbelievers and non-Muslims. The followers do not know that their leaders believe neither in Allah nor Mohammed. A double language serves a double purpose here (fulfills a double function): the faithful believe in God (fanatically), but their leaders (clear-minded and logical) do not. The action of the cult is based on the obedience of a few devoted fanatics. That is, the unbelievers (the leaders) need the faithful (the fidawis) to act. The double strength of belief and unbelief are integrated in the sect. The believers give their lives, and the unbelievers use them as basis of their power.

The strength of Ismailism comes from the fact that their headquarters are located in a very remote place. Starting from a precise geographical location, a faraway citadel which name is very well known throughout Persia, the will of the Ismailis opposes and defies the power of the sultan. This fact is very important: the orders to kill, the death sentences and the assassins of the sect all originate from an inaccessible and mysterious place located in the middle of a high mountains' range to strike at the heart of the empire. This behaviour looks mysterious, unpredictable and frightening. Hassan Sabbah had taken the castle of Alamut in 1091. Located in the mountains of Northern Persia (Rubdar mountains in the Ghilan), it will become later the capital of a small independant state.

The Assassins are particularly interested in castles and mountains' strongholds that are located in remote and difficult to reach places. Throughout the years, they will capture more than thirty of these castles that will make up the true foundation of their power. The most famous being those of Alamut, Lamassar (or Lemsir), Masyaf in Syria and Kerduch.

Remember that it is the precision of the crimes and the choice of victims that gives the Assassins' actions an almost magical efficiency. Precise murders and assassination's attempts fall like thunder and do much more to shake down whole empires than the intervention of mighty armies. The Seldjuk empire and the Fatimid empire of Egypt will collapse partly because of the attacks of the Ismailis. In the same way, the Abassid caliphate will fall, doubly victim of the blows dealt by the Assassins and the Mongol invasion of the 13th century.

Hassan Sabbah is the first to use mystery as a weapon. It allows him to establish a parallel power of an unprecedented nature. He is also the first monarch to view his sons as unworthy of succeeding him and to have them spend all their life as members of the lowest rank of the sect. What is revolutionary in this way of thinking, is that he estimates that his wife and children, simply because they are his wife and children, do not deserve special favours. The sons of Hassan are mixed in the anonymous crowd of the faithful where their father seems to forget about them. One of his sons will be executed for having broken the rule of abstinence and asceticism of the Order by drinking wine, another will be accused of having killed a high priest (Daï) of the order, Hussein Kaïni, and to have conspired against his father. He will be beheaded publicly.

Hassan will choose as successor his favourite disciple: Kya Buzurg-Humid. If he gets rid of his sons, it is because he considers them inferior to him and denies them the necessary qualities to inherit his power. Since their high birth could talk in their favour, he thought it wiser for the future well-being of the sect to eliminate them now while he was still alive. He forbids his successors to start a dynasty, then only the search for- and the choice of the more able and the worthier can allow the order to always have an exceptional Grand master at its head. The foundation of a dynasty would make the intelligence and personality of its leader depend upon the fortunes of heredity. However, Kya Buzurg-Humid will make the mistake of appointing his son Kya-Mohammed as his successor.

The power of the assassins will last 180 years. They will own up to 74 castles and strongholds and have hundreds of thousands of followers. Half of Asia will fear them. Their organization is based on a double discourse (a secret doctrine and a public doctrine), on absolute obedience and on occult slogans and watchwords.

The Old Man of the Mountain aims only at taking fortified castles, possessing obedient slaves and planing and ordering selective assassinations. The secret of his power is his total freedom towards moral obligations and religious faith: <<nothing is true, everything is permitted>>. But this unbelief of the master is hidden, because the followers are believers and must scrupulously fulfill the duties laid down by Islam.

The Grand master must then give an example of austerity and strict religious obedience, although he doesn't believe any of it. An elite, a small group of unbelievers rules a crowd of thousands of believers, that are unaware of the fact that their leaders do not believe a word of what they are preaching. This is all the secret of this brilliant manipulation !
 
 

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