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The 'Assassins' (Medieval Muslim Warrior Sect; Alamut Castle)

ramonmercado

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I cant find any suitable thread for this short piece; if there is a thread on The Assassins perhaps a kind mod would move it there.

New light shed on underworld of Assassins at Alamut Castle

TEHRAN, Dec. 19 (Mehr News Agency) -- A team of archaeologists has stumbled upon two cellars in the Alamut Castle, which was built near the northern Iranian city of Qazvin during the Seljuk era.

The cellars date back to the period of the Ismailites, a Shia sect that was most active as a religio-political movement from the 9th to 13th centuries through its subsects, the Fatimids, the Qaramitah, and the Assassins.



The discovery was made during the latest excavations by the team tasked with studying the Safavid era strata of the castle, Alamut Research Center Director Hamideh Chubak told the Persian service of CHN on Wednesday.

"The cellars were most likely used as private rooms. However, it is believed that they were also utilized as storerooms for foodstuffs," she added.

The castle was used by Hassan Sabbah, the founder of the order known as the Assassins, as a headquarters to command a chain of strongholds all over Iran and Iraq, a network of propagandists, a corps of devoted terrorists, and an unknown number of agents in enemy camps and cities, after he and his allies captured it in 1090.

Hassan Sabbah led an ascetic existence and imposed a puritanical regime at Alamut -- when one of his sons was accused of murder and the other of drunkenness, he had them both executed. He also wrote a number of cogent theological treatises, stressing in particular the need to accept absolute authority in matters of religious faith.

... Payvand News - 12/20/07 ...

http://www.payvand.com/news/07/dec/1196.html
 
This November 2018 National Geographic article provides a broad overview of the Muslim sect that became legendary (most often in the purely fictional sense ... ) as the 'Assassins.'
The original 'Assassins': Medieval warriors of Alamut

High inside a secret mountain fortress, the Nizari Ismaili, a small Muslim sect, struck terror into the powers fighting over the Holy Land in the Middle Ages. Dubbed the "Assassins" by their enemies, the Nizari held power for just 300 years, but their impact would last for centuries.

Conrad of Montferrat, an Italian crusader, was preparing for his coronation as king of Jerusalem, in Tyre, in April 1192. Making his way down a narrow street of the city, he was attacked by two men disguised as monks, who stabbed him to death.

Although historians still speculate who ordered the attack, there is little doubt as to the identity of the killers. They were not monks, but members of a secretive Muslim sect with strongholds seated high in the mountains of Persia and Syria. Headquartered in an impenetrable Persian castle, Alamut, these agents specialized in targeted killings and espionage. Infiltrating the ranks of their enemies, they would strike their targets, often with knives, and were willing to die for their mission. Syrian enemies called them the Hashishim, but they are better known today by the European crusaders’ term: Assassins. ...

Perhaps the first European account of the Assassins comes from a Spanish rabbi, Benjamin of Tudela, who traveled through Syria in 1167. He told of a mysterious leader, the Old Man of the Mountain, who led a sect of warriors who dwelled in hidden mountain fortresses.

The dreaded Assassins were at the peak of their power in the 12th century. Much of what is believed about them comes from accounts of fascinated European crusaders and from the pens of their sworn enemies, Syrian Sunni chroniclers. Their very biased accounts must be taken with a degree of skepticism, for they were intended at times to entertain or defame. They extolled the Assassins' strength and zeal while making wild exaggerated claims about their lifestyles. ...

FULL STORY: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/...izari-ismaili-muslim-warriors-medieval-times/
 
This less voluminous June 2020 National Geographic article summarizes the degree to which the story of the Nizari Ismaili has been exaggerated and misconstrued.
Was the medieval order of Assassins a real thing?

Tales of a Muslim group of drug-fueled, stealth killers stir imaginations, but stray far from the true history of the Nizari Ismaili state. ...

While the days of targeted killings are long past, salacious and incorrect legends of the Nizari live on in popular culture: The Assassin’s Creed series of video games has become one of the best-selling video game franchises of all time—but the secretive, sensationalist picture it paints of the Assassins has no basis in reality.

FULL STORY: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/reference/people/medieval-order-assassins-islam/
 
There is also the etymological possibility that Hashashin (one who smokes or eats marijuana resin) may have given rise to the word assassin (or vice-versa)
 
There is also the etymological possibility that Hashashin (one who smokes or eats marijuana resin) may have given rise to the word assassin (or vice-versa)

That's the accepted origin of the westernized word. The Ismailis' Sunni enemies were the ones who labeled them Hashishin / Hashishim as a pejorative nickname. Westerners (including Marco Polo) adopted this label, and it proliferated.

The western tradition of calling the Nizari lsmailis by the name of Assassins can be traced to the Crusaders and their Latin chroniclers as well as other occidental observers who had originally heard about these sectarians in the Levant. The name, or more appropriately misnomer, Assassin, which was originally derived under obscure circumstances from variants of the word hashish, the Arabic name for a narcotic product, and which later became the common occidental term for designating the Nizari lsmailis, soon acquired a new meaning in European languages; it was adopted as a common noun meaning murderer. However, the doubly pejorative appellation of Assassins continued to be utilised as the name of the Nizari Ismailis in western languages; and this habit was reinforced by Silvestre de Sacy and other prominent orientalists of the nineteenth century who had begun to produce the first scientific studies about the Ismailis.

In more recent times, too, many western Islamists have continued to apply the ill-conceived term ‘Assassins’ to the Nizari Ismailis, perhaps without being consciously aware of its etymology or dubious origins. ...

SOURCE: https://www.iis.ac.uk/introduction-assassin-legends#3
 
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