Sabbatai, it seemed, had simply abandoned his conviction that he was sent to save the world. He chose comfort – even though he secretly continued to practise Judaism. In public he was a good Mohammedan. But his followers knew better: they realized that this was another of his inexplicable actions.
Unfortunately, he was still subject to these extraordinary swings of mood, in one of which he divorced Sarah – although he took her back again as soon as he was normal. And he also continued to preach sexual freedom. In due course, these views caused the Sultan embarrassment, and six years after his conversion, Sabbatai was arrested again. This time he was banished to a remote village in Albania, Dulcigno, where he lived on for another four years. Sarah predeceased him in 1674, and he married again. He still had manic moods in which he declared he was the Messiah, but no one paid any attention.
Oddly enough, his “John the Baptist”, Nathan Ashkenazi, continued to love and revere him as the Messiah, as did thousands of followers, who regarded his conversion as yet another of his strange god-like actions – rather like those of the Japanese Zen masters who suddenly kick a pupil downstairs. Sabbatai was the only messiah known to history who was able to have it both ways: to proclaim himself a charlatan, and still continue to retain the devotion of his followers. He was the last of the great Jewish messiahs.
These are only a small cross-section of the messiahs who have appeared since the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth. Readers who want a fuller account should read Jack Gratus’s The False Messiahs or Norman Cohn’s The Pursuit of the Millennium, where they will find a wide array of amazing and colourful figures. This chapter, unfortunately, has run out of space.
***
There was a widespread belief in England in the late Middle Ages that the British were the descendants of Trojans who fled from Asia Minor after the fall of Troy. The Romans, in fact, believed that they were descendants of the Trojan prince Aeneas, who came to Italy after the fall of Troy. (Virgil described the wanderings of Aeneas after Troy in the Aeneid.)
Around AD 1140 Geoffrey of Monmouth published his immensely popular History of the Kings of Britain, which is largely about King Arthur and Merlin. But it begins by describing how Aeneas’s great-grandson Brutus (or Brute) was forced to flee from Italy after he accidentally killed his father when hunting. After various adventures, Brutus came to the island of Albion – inhabited then only by a few giants – and changed its name to Britain, after his own name. Geoffrey’s book was accepted as reliable history even down to Elizabethan times.
***
Chapter Three
Tales of Bloodshed
We have seen that religious fanatics are capable of ruthless cruelty. But one notable figure of the thirteenth century could also be regarded as the father of modern terrorism. His name was Hasan bin Sabbah, and he is responsible for the modern word “assassin”.
The Assassins
In the year 1273, the Venetian traveller Marco Polo passed through the valley of Alamut, in Persia, and saw there the castle of the Old Man of the Mountain, the head of the Persian branch of the sect of Ismailis, or Assassins. By that time, the sect was two hundred years old, and was on the point of being destroyed by the Mongols, who had invaded the Middle East under the leadership of Genghis Khan.
According to Marco Polo, the Old Man of the Mountain, whose name was Aloadin, had created a Garden of Paradise in a green valley behind the castle, and filled it with “pavilions and palaces the most elegant that can be imagined”, fountains flowing with wine, milk and honey, beautiful houris who could sing and dance seductively. The purpose of this Garden was to give his followers a foretaste of Paradise, so that they might be eager to sacrifice their lives for their leader. When the Old Man wanted an enemy murdered, he would ask for volunteers. These men would be drugged and carried into the secret garden – which, under normal circumstances, was strictly forbidden to all males. They would awake to find themselves apparently in Paradise, with wine, food and damsels at their disposal. After a few days of this, they were again drugged and taken back to the Old Man’s fortress. “So when the Old Man would have any prince slain, he would say to such a youth: ‘Go thou and slay so-and-so; and when thou returnest, my angels shall bear thee to Paradise . . .’”
There is evidence that the story may have a foundation in fact. Behind the remains of the castle, which still exists in the valley of Alamut, there is a green enclosed valley with a spring. But it is hardly large enough to have contained “pavilions and palaces”.
The Ismailis were a breakaway sect from the orthodox Moslems; they were the Mohammedan equivalent of Protestants. After the death of the Prophet Mahomet in 632, his disciple Abu Bakr was chosen to succeed him, thus becoming the first Caliph of Islam. It is a pity that Mahomet, unlike Jesus, never made clear which of his disciples – or relatives – was to be the rock upon which his church was to be built. For other Moslems felt that the Prophet’s cousin Ali was a more suitable candidate: the result was a dissension that split the Moslem world for centuries. The Sunni – the orthodox Moslems – persecuted and slaughtered Ali’s followers, who were known as the Shi’a. In 680, they almost succeeded in wiping out their rivals, when seventy of them – including the Prophet’s daughter Fatima – were surprised and massacred. But the killers overlooked a sick boy – the son of Fatima; so the rebel tradition lived on.
All this murder and suffering produced powerful religious emotions among the Shi’a. They set up their own Caliph – known as the Imam – and they looked forward to the coming of a messiah (or Mahdi) who would lead them to final victory. Strange sects proliferated, led by holy men who came out of the desert. Some believed in reincarnation, others in total moral and sexual freedom. One sect believed in murder as a religious duty, strangling their victims with cords; these may be regarded as the true predecessors of the Assassins.
The Ismailis were a breakaway sect from the original breakaway sect. When the sixth Imam died, his eldest son Ismail was passed over for some reason, and his younger brother Musa appointed. The Ismailis were Moslems who declared that Ismail was the true Imam: they were also known as Seveners, because they believed that Ismail was the seventh and last Imam. The rest of the Shi’a became known as the Twelvers, for they accepted Musa and his five successors as true Imams. (The line came to an end after the twelfth.) The Twelvers became the respectable branch of the heretics, differing from orthodox Sunni only on a few points of doctrine. It was the Ismailis who became the true opposition, creating a brilliant and powerful organization with its own philosophy, ritual and literature. They were intellectuals and mystics and fanatics. With such drive and idealism they were bound to come to power eventually.
Two Assassins being instructed by the “Old Man of the Mountains”
It was some time around the middle of the eleventh century that the greatest of the Ismaili leaders was born – Hasan bin Sabbah, a man who combined the religious fervour of Saint Augustine with the political astuteness of Lenin. He founded the Order of Assassins, and became the first Old Man of the Mountain.
By the time Hasan was born, the Ismailis had become one of the great political powers. The Sunni Caliphs were decadent: the Ismailis set up their own Caliph and their own dynasty. They called themselves the Fatimids (descendants of Fatima, the Prophet’s murdered daughter). They conquered the Nile valley, then spread slowly across Egypt, Syria, North Africa, parts of Arabia, even Sicily. By the end of the tenth century, it looked as if nothing could stop them becoming rulers of all the Moslem lands. But at that point, a new force entered Middle Eastern politics – the Seljuk Turks – who swept across the Moslem world like the ancient Romans. And the Turks, as good Moslems, decided to lend their support to the Sunni Caliphs. By the time Hasan bin Sabbah was a young man, the Ismaili empire was already past its peak.
Hasan was born an orthodox Moslem – or at least, a Twelver, which was almost the same thing. His family lived in Rayy, near modern Teheran. We know little about his early life except that he became an
avid student of every branch of learning. A strong religious impulse led him to look beyond the sect into which he had been born. He was impressed by the intellectual force and mystical fervour of the heretical Ismailis. It took him a long time to decide to join them – for the Ismailis were generally regarded as outcasts and cranks. A serious illness decided him; in 1072 he took the oath of allegiance to the Fatimid Caliph. Four years later he was forced to leave Rayy – no doubt for spreading Ismaili doctrines – and started to make his way towards Cairo, a new city that had been built by the Ismailis as their capital. The journey took two years. In Cairo, he impressed the Caliph, and became a supporter of his eldest son Nizar. He spent three years in the Fatimid court; then his ardent revolutionary temperament got him into trouble – history does not go into detail – and he left Egypt and became a wandering missionary for the Ismaili cause. Legend has it that he was sentenced to death, but that just before his execution, one of the strongest towers in the city collapsed suddenly; this was seen as an omen, so he was sent into exile instead. Another story tells how the ship on which he sailed ran into a violent storm; while the other passengers flung themselves on their knees and prayed, Hasan stood perfectly calm, explaining that he could not die until he had fulfilled his destiny. When the storm suddenly ceased, Hasan got the credit, and made several converts. “Thus,” says Von Hammer (a thoroughly hostile chronicler), “to increase his credit, did he avail himself of accidents and natural occurrences, as if he possessed the command of both.” Von Hammer seems to regard Hasan as a kind of Rasputin figure, a trickster and a fraud who used religion to gain personal power (but then, he also describes the Ismaili religion as “mysteries of atheism and immorality”).
Hasan bin Sabbah was a highly successful missionary, particularly among his own people of Daylam, a wild, independent race who loathed the Turks. The Daylamis had been among the last to be converted to Islam, and even now they tended to be rebellious and unorthodox. Hasan saw their value. Their country was an ideal stronghold. And if Nizar failed to become the next Fatimid Caliph – which seemed highly likely, in view of the intrigues at court – Hasan might well need a stronghold.
As the number of his converts increased, Hasan selected his fortress, the castle of Alamut (or Eagle’s Nest), perched high on a rock in the Elburz mountains, above a cultivated valley about thirty miles long.
His method of acquiring the castle was typical of his methods. First he sent “dais” – preachers – to the villages around the castle, and they made many converts. Then the dais got into the castle, and converted some of its garrison. The castle’s owner, Alid – an orthodox Moslem – was not sure what to do about all this. He seems to have been an indecisive man. At first he professed to be converted; then, one day, he persuaded the Ismailis to leave the castle, and slammed the gates. But he allowed himself to be persuaded to let them in again. At this point, Hasan was smuggled into the castle in disguise. One morning, Alid woke up to discover that his castle was no longer his own. He was politely shown the door and (according to one chronicler) given 3,000 gold dinars in compensation.
This was in 1090. From that time on, until his death thirty-five years later, Hasan lived in his castle. He studied, wrote books, brought up a family and planned conquests. Most of his followers never saw him. The religious rule in the castle was strict; they ate sparingly, and wine was forbidden. Hasan had one of his sons executed for drinking wine. (Another was executed on suspicion – false, as it later turned out – of having planned the murder of one of the dais.)
The Assassins’ Garden Palace
But if the aims were religious, the method was military. The Ismailis wanted to supplant the Sunni Caliphs of Baghdad. In order to do that, they first had to drive out the Turks who supported them. The Turks were the overlords of Persia. So Hasan’s task was to extend his realm, village by village and castle by castle, until he could challenge the Turks directly. Where castles declined to be converted to the Ismaili faith, they were infiltrated or stormed. In towns and villages, Ismaili converts rose up and took control. Like T. E. Lawrence – in his own battle to overthrow the Turks – Hasan’s great advantage was the hatred of the conquered people for their overlords. When he had extended his control to all the area surrounding Alamut, he sent a missionary to the mountainous country called Quhistan in the south-east, where various heretical sects were oppressed by the Turks. There was a popular rising, the Turks were overthrown, and Quhistan became the second great Ismaili stronghold. Not long after, another area of mountain country in the south-west became an Ismaili stronghold when another of Hasan’s followers seized two castles near Arrajan. The Turks now became aware of their danger, and decided it was time to crush the Ismailis; two great expeditions were sent out, one against Alamut, the other against Quhistan. They soon discovered how well Hasan had chosen his fortresses. Although there were a mere seventy defenders, the castle of Alamut was impregnable to direct attack; and the surrounding villages made sure the defenders were not starved into submission by smuggling food up to them by night. A surprise attack sent the Turkish armies flying. The expedition against Quhistan fared no better.
And it was at this point, in 1092, a mere two years after moving to Alamut, that Hasan made the great decision that may well have been his crucial mistake. He recognized that open war with the Turks was out of the question; his armies were too small. But his followers were fanatics who would give their lives for their cause. Why not use them to strike down his chief enemies, one by one? In 1092, the “assassins” claimed their first, and perhaps their most eminent victim, Nizam Al-Mulk, the Vizier of the Turkish Sultan.
Until recent years, it was accepted that Nizam Al-Mulk had been a fellow student of Hasan’s. The story told by Von Hammer – who repeats it from earlier Persian chroniclers – is that Hasan, Nizam Al-Mulk and the poet Omar Khayyam were fellow students, and Hasan suggested to the other two that if any of them should achieve eminence, he should share it with the other two. They all agreed. After some years, Nizam became the Vizier of the Turkish Sultan Alp Arslan, one of the great military geniuses of the period. When Alp Arslan died (1073) and his young son, Malik Shah, came to the throne, Nizam became the most powerful man in the land. At this point, his old school fellows presented themselves and reminded him of their agreement. Omar, being a poet and mathematician (one of the greatest of the Middle Ages), asked only for a quiet place to study; so Nizam gave him a pension and sent him back to his home town of Naishapur. Hasan wanted power, so Nizam found him a position at court. What happened then is not quite clear, except that Nizam realized that his old schoolfellow was supplanting him in the royal favour, and took steps to bring about his downfall. Hasan left Malik’s court vowing vengeance; and that, says Von Hammer, is why Nizam became the first victim of the Assassins.
By 1092, Nizam Al-Mulk was Hasan’s chief enemy, the greatest single danger to the Assassins. Hasan asked for a volunteer to kill the Vizier. A man called Bu Tahir Arrani stepped forward. He disguised himself as a Suli – a holy man – and during the feast of Ramadan, in October 1092, was allowed to approach the litter of Nizam as he was carried out of his audience tent. He drove a knife into Nizam’s breast, and was himself immediately killed by Nizam’s guards. When he heard that the assassination had been successful, Hasan remarked: “The killing of this devil is the beginning of bliss.” He meant it literally; his followers accepted that to die like Bu Tahir Arrani was an immediate passport to Paradise.
It may be that this murder showed Hasan where his real power lay. He could capture a fortress by preaching, cunning and bribery. He could destroy an enemy by sending out a single assassin. It looked like the ideal formula for guerrilla warfare.
Where he made his mistake was in failing to grasp the ultimate consequences of such a method: that if his men destroyed their enemies like scorpions or cobras, they would arouse the same loathing and detestation as scorpions or cobras. And that sooner or later, the horror they inspired would cancel all their gains. It was this th
at eventually frustrated Hasan’s plans for conquest.
But that lay far in the future. For the moment, Hasan’s method was triumphantly successful. Not long after Nizam’s death, the Sultan Malik also died – of a stomach complaint, apparently. One of Nizam’s sons, Fakhri, was killed in Naishapur; he had been accosted by a beggar who said: “The true Moslems are no more and there are none left to take the hand of the afflicted.” As Fahri reached for alms, he was stabbed to the heart. Nizam’s other son, Ahmed, laid siege to the castle of Alamut; the inhabitants suffered severe hardships, but again it proved impregnable. Ahmed was later stabbed by an assassin, but he recovered.
The candidates for assassination were always carefully chosen. Hasan played his game like a master chess player. The death of Malik Shah brought on a struggle for power at court; the new Sultan, Berkyaruq, had to defend his throne against his half-brothers. Hasan lent his support to Berkyaruq, and assassinated a number of Berkyaruq’s enemies. Berkyaruq’s officers formed an uneasy liaison with the Assassins. So when Berkyaruq finally put down the rebellion, Hasan was allowed to operate in peace for a few years.
But he continued to practise the arts of infiltration and intimidation; Ismailis joined Berkyaruq’s army, and made converts. When officers opposed them, they were silenced with the threat of assassination. A point came where no one in authority dared to go out without armour under his robes. Leaders of rival religious sects were murdered. One opponent was stabbed in the mosque as he knelt at prayers, even though a bodyguard was standing directly behind him. Eventually – in 1101 – Berkyaruq lost his temper and decided it was time to destroy the Ismailis. He combined with his half-brother Sanjar to attack the stronghold at Quhistan; the armies laid waste the countryside, destroying the crops, and would have captured the main stronghold (Tabas) if the Ismailis had not bribed the enemy general to go away – a typically oriental touch. Sanjar made other attempts to subjugate the Ismailis; but eventually came to tolerate them. The historian Juvanyi tells a story to explain this. Hasan managed to bribe one of Sanjar’s guards to stick a dagger into the ground near his head, when Sanjar lay in a drunken sleep. Shortly thereafter, Sanjar received a message from Hasan that said: “That dagger could just as easily have been stuck in your heart.” Sanjar saw the wisdom of tolerating the Ismailis.