Old Man of the Mountains

Are these drug addicted boys any different than the khat chewing Sudanese Muslims now roaming the streets gunning down innocents in their drug induced fervor?


In 1074 "the Armenian general Badr al-Jamali traveled with his army from Syria to Cairo and took effective control. From that moment, the power of the caliph was extremely limited and the real ruler of the state was the commander-in-chief of the army. the last caliphs were little more than figureheads."

"On the death of the Caliph al-Mustansir in 1094, the new commander opposed the Caliph's own designation of his son Nizar as caliph and placed Nizar's brother al-Musta'li on the throne... The Isma'ilis in the East [Persia] refused to acknowledge al-Musta'li and broke off relations with the dynasty in Cairo."

"The dissenting group proclaimed their allegiance to the by-passed Caliph Nizar, and it is for this reason that members of the sect which became known to history as The Assassins were first known as the Nizari Isma'ilis."

- Edward Burman, The Assassins - Holy Killers of Islam
"'Assasseen' in Arabic signifies 'guardians', and some commentators have considered this to be the true origin of the word: 'guardians of the secrets'."

- Arkon Daraul, Secret Societies
"Hasan-i Sabbah was a revolutionary of genius who devised and put into practice the 'new' preaching or da'wa of the Nizari Isma'ilis, which was to replace the 'old' da'wa of the Fatimid Isma'ilis at Cairo... It is likely that he was born around 1060 in Qom, one-hundred-and-fifty kilometers south of modern Tehran."

"He had a fine mind, an excellent knowledge of theology, and evidently possessed the phenomenal strength of will necessary to pursue his ideal for so many years... We can imagine him converting the people of Daylam just as he had himself been converted, by patiently digging away at a potential proselyte's religious doubts until they were strong enough to admit the possibility of an alternative."

"Hasan-i Sabbah had managed through careful theological argument and relentless logic applied to the Shi'a doctrines, to create a powerful sectarian sense of community based on the traditional secrecy and conspiratorial nature of Isma'ilism."

"The Alborz Mountains, which rise to a maximum height of over six-thousand meters in the volcanic Mount Damavand, constitute a natural barrier between the Caspian and the vast gently tilting plateau which constitutes Central Iran. Although not distant as the crow field from Tehran, this mountainous area has always been and still is remote. It was presumably for this reason that many shi-ite sects and fleeing Isma'ilis and other Moslem heretics had... for many centuries taken refuge in the mountain kingdom of ancient Daylam."

Within a high mountain valley stands "the castle of Alamut, the fortress retreat of Hasan-i Sabbah, which became almost legendary after the supposed 1273 visit of Marco Polo and his description of the 'Old Man of the mountains' and the 'Ashishin'..."

- Edward Burman, The Assassins - Holy Killers of Islam
"The Old Man kept at his court such boys of twelve years old as seemed to him destined to become courageous men. When the Old Man sent them into the garden in groups of four, ten or twenty, he gave them hashish to drink. They slept for three days, then they were carried sleeping into the garden where he had them awakened."

"When these young men woke, and found themselves in the garden with all these marvelous things, they truly believed themselves to be in paradise. And these damsels were always with them in songs and great entertainments; they; received everything they asked for, so that they would never have left that garden of their own will."

"And when the Old Man wished to kill someone, he would take him and say: 'Go and do this thing. I do this because I want to make you return to paradise'. And the assassins go and perform the deed willingly."

- Marco Polo - on his visit to Alamut in 1273
"That Hasan-i Sabbah and other early Assassin Masters had gardens seems likely since the garden is such an important part of Persian noble life and of mysticism. The water channels and meticulous care to ensure regular water supplies at Assassin castles echo the care which Persian and Arab villages and country houses today give to the presence of running water. So the legend of the garden in which Assassins were taken probably has its origins in fact."

"Many scholars have argued, and demonstrated convincingly, that the attribution of the epithet 'hashish eaters' or 'hashish takers' is a misnomer derived from enemies the Isma'ilis and was never used by Moslem chroniclers or sources. It was therefore used in a pejorative sense of 'enemies' or 'disreputable people'. This sense of the term survived into modern times with the common Egyptian usage of the term Hashasheen in the 1930s to mean simply 'noisy or riotous'. It is unlikely that the austere Hasan-i Sabbah indulged personally in drug taking."

"There is no mention of that drug [hashish] in connection with the Persian Assassins - especially in the library of Alamut ('the secret archives')."

"Once established in a secure and permanent base, Hasan sent da'is [missionaries] out from Alamut in all directions, At the same time he pursued a policy of territorial expansion, taking castles either by means of propaganda or by force, and building others... Life at Alamut, and we may suppose in the other fortresses at this time, was characterized by extreme asceticism and severity."

"Political assassination was not unknown in Islam before Hasan-i Sabbah. Earlier sects had used murder as a political technique, and there is evidence that Mohammed himself disposed of his enemies by suggesting that they did not deserve to live - and hoping that faithful followers would take the hint. There had even been an extremist Shi'ite group known as the 'stranglers' after their preferred method of assassination."