Hasan-i-Sabbah's propaganda was on the whole successful; the Syrian Ismailis mainly followed his lead and broke with Cairo, remaining loyal to Nizar as required by Hasan. They also acknowledged the authority of Alamut. The chiefs of the sect in Syria seem to have been mainly Iranians, sent by Hasan. There were, however, difficulties in the conduct of the revolt, perhaps because the circumstances in Syria were different from those in Iran.
During the early part of the twelfth century, up to about 1130, the Ismailis attempted to operate from bases in the cities. For a time they were allied with Ridwan, the Seljuq ruler of Aleppo. The reasons for Ridwan's friendship are unclear; his father had ruled the whole of Syria, but his own position was much less secure and he had to contend with numerous rival Turkish emirs. He may have found the Nizaris useful as military allies, or he may have feared them. There is even a suggestion that he was himself convinced of the truth of Nizari religious doctrines. In any case the alliance did not last long. Ridwan was under intermittent pressure from Muhammad Tapar (Hasan-i-Sabbah's arch-enemy) to repudiate the Nizaris, and he may well have come to think that they were too independent and dangerous to have as allies. He executed some and expelled others from Aleppo, although it seems he continued to employ Nizaris from time to time in his campaigns even after this.
The Nizaris themselves, however, decided that in future they must not depend on the good will of rulers, and did in Syria what they had already done in Iran: withdrew from the cities to strongholds in the mountains. This transfer was not complete until after Ridwan's death in 1113, but from about 1130 onwards their chief centre was in the Jabal Bahra (Jabal Ansariyya) mountains in central Syria, where they acquired a number of fortresses. At about this time, too, there arrived from Alamut a new chief called Abu Muhammad, who remained in office for 50 years until he was succeeded by Sinan.
The political situation in Syria was always complex, but at the very end of the eleventh century it was made even more so by the arrival of the Crusaders. They reached Syria in 1097; at first they were taken to be merely raiders, but by 1099 they had captured Jerusalem and evidently intended to stay. In the early years of the twelfth century they had established themselves all along the east coast of the Mediterranean and showed that they were a power to be reckoned with; henceforth the Nizaris found themselves obliged to conduct hostilities on two fronts, although they were often able to play one power off against the other.
During the first thirty years of the twelfth century the Muslim chroniclers tell of numerous assassinations by the Ismailis. Most of these coups were carried out against the Seljuqs, but the Fatimids (who were, of course, regarded as usurpers by the Nizaris) also came in for their share of attention. In 1121 the Commander-in-Chief, Afdal, was murdered by three Ismailis from Aleppo, and in 1130 the Fatimid Caliph himself was killed. After this, however, the Nizaris were mainly concerned with internal affairs and consolidating their position in the mountains.
By the time Sinan arrived in Syria they held a number of castles; the principal ones we hear of are Qadmus, Kahf, and Masyaf.
Sinan was born near Basra, in Iraq, and was brought up as a Shiite. As a youth he quarrelled with his brothers and set out on foot for Alamut. He arrived there during the reign of Hasan II's father, Muhammad I, who received him kindly and educated him along with his two sons. We may assume that Sinan was won over by the young Hasan and adopted his religious ideas, for when Hasan came to power in Alamut he appointed Sinan as chief of the Nizaris in Syria.
The exact timing of these events is conjectural, but the most plausible reconstruction is that Sinan left Alamut a few years before Muhammad's death (perhaps because he had incurred Muhammad's displeasure as one of those who looked on Hasan as the Imam). For the details of Sinan's life we must rely mainly on Abu Firas, an Ismaili author of the fourteenth century who collected a number of stories about Sinan that were current in his day. Abu Firas's account is frankly hagiography and some of his tales are obviously legendary, but he gives us the picture of Sinan that was generally accepted among the Syrian Ismailis of the time and no doubt it allows us to form a reasonably accurate general impression of the man.
According to Abu Firas, Sinan arrived in Syria incognito but furnished with a letter of appointment from Alamut. He did not present this at once but took up residence in the village of Masyaf. While walking one day with a companion he came to a pool; his companion was astonished to see that Sinan's face was not reflected in the water. Sinan told him to say nothing about this to anyone.
Soon afterwards Sinan left Masyaf and went to a village near Kahf, where he worked as a school teacher and physician, achieving great renown because his prescriptions were invariably successful. Chief Abu Muhammad, learning of his fame, invited him to stay in the castle of Kahf, where he remained for seven years. He wore a Yemeni cloak, which every year he would unpick, wash, and sew together himself; he used also to cobble his own sandals. This asceticism gained him a reputation for sanctity, which was enhanced by his habit of sitting for hours motionless on a rock while he held converse with invisible beings, his lips moving silently.
When Abu Muhammad fell terminally ill (probably in 1162), Sinan visited him and told him he would die next day. He then showed him his letter of appointment. At this, Abu Muhammad began to weep.
"Why do you weep?" Sinan asked.
"And how should I not weep?" replied Abu Muhammad, "seeing that for seven years I have failed to carry out a vital instruction, while you were living among us like a servant although it was I who should have been a servant to you." But Sinan assured him that his conduct of affairs had been so exemplary that he had nothing to reproach himself with. Next day Abu Muhammad died, at the exact time that Sinan had foretold.
Probably Sinan delayed taking command so that he should have time to make a proper assessment of the situation in Syria; he may also have been waiting for Hasan II to come to power. If he really waited as long as seven years, however, it implies that he must have left Alamut well before the accession of Hasan, which would tend to support the idea that he got into difficulties with Muhammad I. At any rate, it seems pretty certain that he was expressly charged by Hasan with the proclamation of the Resurrection in Syria.
Sinan's first task in coming to power was to quell dissent among the Nizaris. As soon as Muhammad was dead a separatist faction put their own man in power, but the usurper was murdered at the instigation of one Fahd. News of these events reached Alamut; letters were sent to Syria appealing for unity, confirming the appointment of Sinan, and ordering that Fahd, who had been arrested, should be released, although the actual murderer was to be executed. In spite of these directives dissent grumbled on, but Sinan quickly showed his determination and resourcefulness. A group of malcontents met secretly at Masyaf to plot against him, but Sinan wrote the same night from Kahf to the governor of Masyaf, giving the names of the plotters and a verbatim account of what they had said; he ordered the governor to reprimand them severely. This was done; the conspirators confessed their fault and begged for forgiveness, which Sinan magnanimously granted. After this his position seems to have been secure.
We see here an example of Sinan's ability to know what was happening in men's minds, whether close at hand or at a distance. Presumably in this case he had spies, but there are many stories imputing telepathic powers to him. Abu Firas says that it was a usual practice for Sinan to reply to letters without unsealing them, and the replies always tallied point for point with the content of the unopened letters. As the historian Hodgson remarks, it is interesting that Sinan's alleged psychic feats are of fairly constant kinds: there are, for example, no reports of miraculous cures or of the materialization of objects, which might be expected if the stories were pure inventions.
Sinan was deeply respected and loved by his people. He had no personal bodyguard; his word alone was enough to secure obedience. He moved about continually in his territory, building new fortifications and renovating old ones, and these activities reportedly gave rise to a number of paranormal feats, often performed for the purpose of helping his followers.
Another anecdote concerns the same castle, where there was an enormous rock at the mouth of a cave. Sinan, being afraid that it might roll down and damage the castle, ordered it to be removed. The men worked at it for many days but couldn't budge it, so they went to Sinan to ask for advice. Sinan took a light hammer, and going up to the rock tapped it at each side. At once it went bounding away down beside the castle. The workmen now became alarmed and cried out: "Lord, this rock will crush our vines!". But Sinan called out an order, and the rock came to rest on a slope which was too steep for a man to stand on.
This story has a tailpiece. Much later, when the Mamluk ruler Baybars conquered the Nizari fortresses, one of his lieutenants heard the story about the rock and had the soil dug out from under it to make it roll down; but the rock merely toppled into the hollow and lodged there so firmly that it was quite impossible to move it again.
Everything happened as Sinan had foretold. Eventually the lawyers reached Kahf, where they were accommodated in the same way as at Jirsiq. Sinan then called them before him and said: "I shall allot each of you a special day, during which I shall debate with that person alone, no on else being allowed to say anything at all, until one of us is reduced to silence; either he or I." (This rather artificial mode of discussion seems to have been widely practised at the time.)
This plan was adopted. Sinan overcame the learned visitors one by one, and as each was defeated he made the others sign a paper to agree that this was in fact the case. At last there remained only the group leader. After four hours he, too, was speechless; Sinan sportingly offered him an intermission, but he replied that he saw no way out of the impasse. Once more Sinan obtained the participants' signatures to this effect. Then he said: "Gentlemen, since your arrival among us you have not touched any food or drink that we have prepared but have bought all your provisions with the money we gave you, because you don't believe us to be Muslims." The lawyers admitted that they had thought in this way at first, but now they were convinced of their error and recognized Sinan and his people to be true Muslims. "God knows your minds, and your secrets are not hidden from Him," Sinan remarked sombrely; and he made them once again write down and sign a statement that they had not eaten anything that had been provided for them. Then he said: "What you have spoken is the opposite of your true thoughts. When you leave here you will all die." He gave details of how each one would die, one after another, until he reached the leader of the group. "You alone," he said, "will reach Damascus, and will tell the Qadi (governor) what has happened, after which you will go home and will die the same night". And everything turned out just as Sinan had foretold.
In what is evidently an alternative version of the same story, Abu Firas records an interesting discussion between Sinan and the visiting delegation on the subject of previous Adams. The leader of the group said that he wanted to begin by questioning Sinan about Adam. The riposte was swift:
"Which Adam do you mean?" Sinan asked; "the first, or the second, or the third, or the fourth, or the fifth, or the sixth, or the seventh, or the eighth?"
"Sir," replied the leader, understandably out of his depth, "I know of only one Adam; the one who is mentioned in the Qur'an."
"He is the last Adam, not the first," Sinan replied; and he went on to say that he knew of 360 Adams, together with their descendants and their religions, and he was prepared to hold forth on any of them.
"I know nothing of that," the leader replied.
"Can you prove me wrong?" Sinan demanded. The hapless leader attempted to do so but was decisively routed. (This obscure reference to 360 Adams relates to the elaborate Ismaili cosmology based on cyclical time divided into epochs, each with its own Adam; the number is significant. See Appendix 2 for further details of this.)
A member of another deputation which visited Sinan was also caught out in an attempted deception but his fate was happier. The chiefs of ten of the mountain tribes visited Sinan intending to seek alliance with him. Each of them bowed to him and Sinan greeted them in return; but one man bowed, not to Sinan, but to the sun which was shining on the carpet. Sinan did not return his greeting. Three days later, when the chiefs were leaving, Sinan sent a robe to each man with the exception of the one who had failed to salute him. A servant came with the robes and read out from a list the names of the nine who were to be honoured. Noticing that the tenth man had received nothing, his companions were perturbed; he would, they said, lose face if he went away empty-handed. The servant relayed these remarks to Sinan. "Tell the tenth chief to ask the sun for a robe, since it was the sun he saluted," Sinan replied. The chief now acknowledged his fault and apologised to Sinan, who relented and sent him his robe.
"Bring him to me tomorrow," Sinan said. When the boy arrived, Sinan told him to take a bag and go to a certain spot where there was a cairn. Here he was to call out a name and say: "Come out of your hole and enter this bag, so that I may bring you to someone who will deliver you from your present condition." At this a large snake would come into the bag; the youth was to close the bag and bring it to Sinan.
The young man did as he was told and captured the snake. When he tried to pick up the bag, however, he found that he could not even lift it. At last, with the help of a man whom Sinan had sent as a guide, he got the bag on his back and staggered a few steps. Then a doubt occurred to him: surely it was futile to carry this snake to Sinan? He must have been mad to agree. At that moment the snake became so heavy that his knees buckled; he fell and could not get up again.
"Put the bag down," his companion said; but he was unable to do so without help. Then the young man realized that what had happened was t he result of his own doubting thoughts. Moreover, he reflected, the fact that the snake obeyed the name that Sinan had supplied and had come willingly at Sinan's command could only mean that Sinan was close to God. While these thoughts were passing through his mind his companion was loading the snake on his back again, and now he found that it was very light. Each time he entertained a doubting thought it grew heavy again, but when he thought well of Sinan it grew lighter. So at last he became fully convinced of his error.
When he returned, Sinan told him to untie the bag. As soon as he did so the snake emerged, and placing its head on Sinan's foot it died. "This snake," Sinan explained, "was So-and-so in a previous life; God shut it up in the cairn for five hundred years, but today He has delivered it." As for the young man, he became one of Sinan's loyallest followers.
"When the soul appears in a human form it begins to think and reason so as to grasp, through the intermediary of the body, the theological sciences; that is, to recognize the Imam of the time. When it has achieved this recognition it rises towards the world of light. As long as the soul has not recognized the Imam of its time it will return to the world of birth and death, the world of the body and the place of suffering, until it does eventually recognize the Imam and acknowledge his authority. Then it will be purified and saved. But if it does not recognize him, it will continue to come and go for many centuries."A certain wise man used to say to his `son' (his pupil): `O my son! Try to release your soul by a single residence in the body and not by a second passage through a new body.'"
Some of Abu Firas's stories imply that Sinan accepted the possibility of human rebirth in animal form. Once, when Sinan was travelling with a group from Qadmus to Masyaf, they met a large snake. His men would have killed it, but Sinan prevented them, saying that the snake was Fahd - the Ismaili who had arranged for the murder of the man who had tried to seize power after the death of Abu Muhammad. Fahd, Sinan explained, had assumed this form to expiate his many sins, and must not be released.
Another transmigration story concerns a monkey which was brought to Kahf by a wandering musician. Sinan told one of his people to give the monkey a coin. The monkey took it, examined it carefully, and then fell dead. Sinan paid the disconsolate musician for his animal and then explained the reason for its death. The monkey, he said, had been a king in a former life, and the coin bore the king's head. When it saw the coin it remembered who it had been, and so great was the shock of its present degradation that it died.
A man came to see Sinan in a village where he was staying. As soon as he dismounted, his mare, which was a particularly fine animal, escaped and ran up to Sinan; its eyes filled with tears and it rubbed its muzzle on against the ground. Sinan spoke to it kindly and reassuringly, saying that all would be well and it should return to its master. It did so; but almost at once it fell dead. The owner, thunderstruck, begged Sinan for an explanation. "You would not understand," Sinan replied, but still the man begged to be told. "Very well," Sinan said; "this mare was in previous life the daughter of a king. She came to me to complain of the cruel way you treated her, and she asked me to implore God to release her from you."
Sinan's kindness to animals - a most unexpected trait to find at that time and place - emerges yet again in another story, in which transmigration does not seem to play a part. A pigeon once flew in at his window and began to walk about on the carpet, cooing loudly. Sinan asked for a certain man to be brought before him. "Is this your pigeon?" he demanded. The man confirmed that it was. "This bird," Sinan said, "has come to me to complain about you. I swear to you that it you kill its nestlings again I will see to it that you burn at the stake first and in hell later."
"I hear you can walk through fire; won't you be so good as to give us a demonstration?"
"Can I have my clothes?" begged the unfortunate magician.
"Why, does your fire-resistance depend on your supernatural powers, or only on your clothes?" Sinan demanded, and he went on: "Very well; we will neither boil you nor burn you on a pyre; we will throw you in a pit and light a fire there."
This was done; the wretched man was burnt until nothing was left but his hands, which Sinan sent to the Governor of Baghdad with a covering note; "and his soul," as Abu Firas remarks sententiously, "was thrown into the fires of hell." It seems a rather severe penalty for fraud.
It will be evident that a number of Abu Firas's stories concerns snakes, over which Sinan seems to have had special powers. When the fortress of Khawabi was being restored the workmen were at the point of clearing the soil from a large flagstone at the threshold of the main gate. Sinan sent a messenger post-haste to stop them until he arrived. When he reached the spot he said: "If you had moved this flagstone you would have damaged the talisman it covers, and then no one could have lived here because of the snakes." Then he told them to raise one side of the stone a little, and when this had been done there appeared a bronze snake. When everyone had seen it, Sinan had the stone replaced exactly as it had been.
As will be evident from these stories, Sinan's followers regarded him as more than human. Indeed it is said that because he limped (his foot had been injured by a falling stone, possibly in an earthquake) the more simple-minded among his people wished to kill him, in the confident expectation that he would be restored to them whole and uninjured; and he had quite a hard time to dissuade them.
We can see this from Guyard's Fragment I, a fascinating, if obscure, Arabic text which is ascribed to Sinan. The title is as follows:
THE CHAPTER CONTAINING THE HOLY WORDS OF OUR LORD RASHID AL-DIN (PEACE BE UPON HIM): IT IS THE MOST EXCELLENT OF EXPLANATIONS. I PLACE MY TRUST IN MY LORD: THERE IS NO OTHER GOD BUT HE: HE IS THE HIGH AND THE GREAT.
This title makes it clear at the outset that Sinan is a manifestation of the Divine Impulse; in other words, he seems to be equivalent to the Imam. The text elaborates this idea, by identifying Sinan with a variety of historical and legendary figures, including Khidr (the Green Man, an important Near Eastern mythological figure). Sinan, we are told, appears in the periods of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed. Sometimes he is one personage, sometimes another; sometimes he is several at the same time, and he even appears as the stars, sun, and moon. But the final epiphany, the culmination of all the rest, is as Sinan himself.
"Religion was not complete for you until I appeared to you in Rashid al-Din. Those who were prepared to recognize me did so, while others denied me; but the Truth goes on, and those who teach it continue their work; this is the pattern in every age and every cycle."I am the master of creation. The dwelling [the world] is not empty of the eternal seeds. I am the witness, the watcher, the dispenser of mercy at the beginning and the end. Do not be deceived by the changing of appearances. You say, `So-and-so passed away, So-and-so succeeded him.' But I tell you to regard all the faces as one face, for as long as the master of creation is in this world, present, existent. Do not depart from the orders of him to whom you are engaged, whether he is Arab, Persian, Turk, or Greek. I am the ruler, the sovereign master of orders and of will. Whoever knows me from the esoteric aspect possesses the Truth, and no one can know me who does not obey my orders."
And the text concludes with a doxology which I find particularly delightful: "Praise be to God, Lord of the worlds! This is a clear explanation." Clarity is hardly a quality that I would have attributed to this treatise myself, and the commentators seem to have made heavy weather of it, to judge by the discrepancies in their interpretations.
Although there is room for argument about the details of the text, however, the general idea is clear. The Divine Impulse has appeared again and again throughout history in different forms. This is standard Ismaili doctrine, but what is new about the present version is that the latest epiphany is not the Imam but is Sinan himself.
Some such exaltation of Sinan's role would make good sense. Alamut was far away and the Syrians could hardly be expected to feel personal devotion for an Imam whom they would never see. Sinan, on the other hand, was in their presence. But he could hardly claim to be the Imam, except at the cost of branding the lord of Alamut as a usurper. If he were to avoid this, and at the same time not to represent himself as spiritually inferior to the lord of Alamut, he had to present a more flexible version of the Resurrection, in which all the leading figures were roughly equal and in which it was conceivable that the Divine Impulse could appear simultaneously in different forms.
To the skeptical modern mind, inured to the machinations of power politics, it may seem as if this were merely a cynical ploy on Sinan's part, designed to secure his own position as undisputed master in Syria, and perhaps this is partly what it was. I think, nevertheless, that there is more to the story.
So far as we can tell, Sinan left Alamut with the blessing of Hasan II and probably furnished with instructions about how to proclaim the Resurrection. Indeed, the two men may well have discussed the ideas of the Resurrection many times in Alamut. Sinan may thus have had Hasan's authorization for the version which he eventually put out at Alamut. On the other hand, it is also possible that Sinan took matters very much into his own hands after the death of Hasan. He was certainly able and independent, and conditions in Syria were quite different from those in Iran. He may well have felt entitled to go his own way to a large extent when Hasan was murdered, and to make his own interpretation of Nizari doctrine. Aware as he was of his own power and authority, he probably felt little awe of Muhammad II, the youthful new ruler of Alamut, who was much younger than himself and whom he did not know personally, at least as an adult. We must remember, too, the difficulties of mediaeval communications, especially for a persecuted sect like the Nizaris, whose messengers must always travel clandestinely. Alamut was a long way off, and the temptation to a man of Sinan's resourcefulness to go his own way must have been almost irresistible.
The Syrian Nizaris remained nominally under the control of Alamut, but it appears that during Sinan's lifetime they enjoyed a good deal of autonomy. This is reflected in the reports which were current among them that Sinan had been seen on top of a mountain at night, talking to a green bird that glowed with light. Sinan said that this was the martyred Hasan II who had come to ask for his help - which implied, of course, that Sinan was at least Hasan's equal. We do not know much about relations between Syria and Alamut at this time, but there are suggestions that they were strained and even that Muhammad II wanted to get rid of Sinan and sent assassins against him; but Sinan discovered them in time and, instead of executing them, won them over. (But this may actually refer to attempts on Sinan's life made earlier, during the reign of Muhammad I, which would place them in a quite different light.)
Sinan is undoubtedly one of the most impressive of all the Nizari leaders, and a legendary awareness of this has persisted in the West, for Sinan, rather than the lord of Alamut, is the original Old Man of the Mountain. (`Old Man' is a literal translation of the Persian `pir', which really means a sheikh.) How much his alleged paranormal powers were genuine and how much they were due to rumour and folklore we cannot know, and to some extent the attitude you take to them depends on what you think about the reality of such phenomena as telepathy and clairvoyance. If you find such things credible there seems no reason why Sinan should not have been gifted in this way; if you don't, other explanations are of course possible. Guyard suggests that Sinan's alleged clairvoyance was really due to his use of carrier pigeons, and finds evidence for this in his fondness for pigeons; but this seems rather a contrived explanation.
Whatever his status as a seer may have been, Sinan was no mere fanatic or rabble-rouser. He was a remarkably able ruler, who preserved the independence of his people in the face of serious threats from outside and potentially dangerous tensions internally. His renown was well deserved.
This letter (which is also quoted as having been sent to Saladin) may really be from Sinan; certainly the reference to substance and accidents is an unmistakable Ismaili touch, and the avian metaphors accord well with Sinan's fondness for animals.
In 1169 Nur el-Din's lieutenant Shirkuh conquered Egypt for his master and became ruler in Cairo. But soon after this triumph he died, and was succeeded by Saladin - still a young man, who had given little token as yet of the pre-eminence he was later to achieve. The Fatimid dynasty survived the conquest for a year or two, but Saladin brought Egypt back into the Sunni fold. This he did at the insistence of Nur el-Din, and rather against his own will; not that he had any sympathy for Ismailism - on the contrary, he was if anything even more ardently Sunni than Nur el-Din - but after two centuries of Fatimid rule Egypt was a dangerous place for a foreign Sunni ruler, and Saladin feared for his life. His position was in fact unenviable: at home the Egyptian nobility was intriguing against him in collaboration with the Franks, who had long harboured designs on Egypt, while abroad his relations with Nur el-Din had deteriorated seriously. Then, in 1174, two events occurred that transformed the situation totally.
First, Nur el-Din died and was succeeded by his son, a boy of eleven. At once the western Muslim world fell apart in rival factions; there was no longer a serious threat to Saladin from Syria.
Shortly afterwards came the death of Amalric, King of Jerusalem. Like Nur el-Din, Amalric had been a strong ruler; according to Steven Runciman he was the last king of Jerusalem worthy of the name. At the time of his death he was planning further campaigns against Saladin, but now the unity of the Latin Kingdom, too, was in question, for Amalric's son Baldwin was thirteen and a leper.
Saladin took the opportunity which these events offered and marched into Syria. Soon he found himself in conflict with the Nizaris. The reasons for this are not entirely clear, but Sinan may well have felt apprehensive at the thought of having such a powerful and virtually unopposed Sunni general more or less on his doorstep. Whatever his exact motives may have been, Sinan dispatched assassins against Saladin on at least two occasions. The first was in December 1174 or January 1175, when Saladin was besieging Aleppo. The assassins got into his camp but were recognized; there was a fight and many people were killed, but Saladin escaped. The second attempt was in May 1176, when Saladin was attacked by assassins disguised as soldiers. He was wearing armour, however, and was not seriously hurt, although again a number of his officers were killed. After this, Saladin took to sleeping in a special wooden tower and no one whom he did not know personally was allowed to come near him.
In the summer of 1176 Saladin decided it was time to finish these dangerous Nizaris once and for all. He therefore invaded their territory and laid siege to Masyaf. For what followed we are once more indebted to the invaluable Abu Firas.
Sinan was not at Masyaf when Saladin encamped before it, but was staying at a village near Qadmus with only two companions. Saladin wrote him a letter demanding his surrender. The messenger arrived at the village, where Saladin was sitting on the terrace of a house. Unable to believe that such a great man should attended by only two companions, the messenger asked where Sinan was. On being assured that this was Sinan, he laughed scornfully and went towards him. As he approached, however, he saw Sinan enveloped in a bright light; the nearer he came, the more dazzling grew the light, until he was overcome by fear and unable to advance another step. Sinan told one of his companions to bring the man to him.
When he had recovered, the messenger confessed his slighting thoughts and begged Sinan to take him into his service. But Sinan sent him back to his master with a reply. "Tell the Sultan," Sinan said, "that if he wants me he should come here; I have only these two men whom you see. If he doesn't come to me, I shall go to him tomorrow."
Saladin, suspecting a trap, was unwilling to lead his army into the mountains, where an ambush would be easy. Sinan meanwhile left the village and and went to the top of a mountain overlooking Masyaf. Seeing him there from the valley below, Saladin surrounded the foot of the mountain with troops and sent about fifty or sixty high-ranking officers on horseback to arrest him. Sinan's companions urged flight, but Sinan reassured them, saying that the horsemen could not reach them. And indeed they were unable to do so; they had to confess their powerlessness and return to Saladin. Greatly surprised, the Sultan wrote a second letter to Sinan, who meanwhile, even before the letter had been sent, was composing a reply. A messenger set out on horseback with Saladin's letter. Seeing this, Saladin said to his companions: "That man is a Kurd. He thinks he can approach us but he will be unable to do so." Then he took a ring from his finger and told one of his men to place it on the ground at a distance from where they were sitting.
When the messenger reached the spot where the ring had been placed his horse stopped dead and refused to go on in spite of all he could do with whip and spurs. At last he had to dismount. "Take him my answer," said Sinan, "but when he wants to give you the letter, do not accept it; tell him to return it to the Sultan with the seal intact." Having given these instructions, Sinan took no further notice of the messenger.
When Saladin received Sinan's answer he found that it corresponded point for point with his own letter. Deeply impressed, he began to think that Sinan was more than human, and took elaborate precautions to prevent possible assassination attempts. But during the night Sinan came down from the mountain holding a lantern that was so bright that his people in the castle could see him clearly. Nevertheless he made his way unseen into the enemy camp and entered the tent of the sleeping Saladin. There were lamps at the head and foot of Saladin's bed; Sinan changed their positions, so that the lamp which had been at the foot now stood at the head and vice versa; also, he placed at the bedside some of the special cakes which the Ismailis baked and transfixed them with a poisoned dagger, on which was a piece of paper inscribed with threatening verses. Then he returned to the mountain.
Saladin woke just in time to see Sinan's retreating form. He gave a terrible cry, which brought his guards running. They assured him that they had seen and heard nothing. Everyone was overcome by fear, especially Saladin. Recognizing his peril, he now sent to Sinan asking for a safe-conduct, but Sinan replied that he must first cease his attack on Masyaf. Saladin thereupon raised his siege and marched away, abandoning all his military equipment, which Sinan parcelled into lots and distributed among his castles. When Saladin had left the area he once more asked Sinan for a safe-conduct, and this was now granted. Henceforth Saladin was Sinan's firm friend.
Abu Firas, in a note to this account, is at pains to assure us that Sinan's exploits were not performed by magic but were due to the grace of God. Our own reservations about this remarkable tale are likely to be somewhat different: how much is to be believed? Clearly the story includes a large element of the fabulous, but the fact remains that Saladin did raise the siege of Masyaf and from this time on he seems to have been on good terms with the Nizaris. It may well be that assassins did penetrate his camp and that fear for his personal safety was the reason for his change of plan. The historian Kamal al-Din tells an interesting story that supports this ideas.
Sinan sent a messenger to Saladin. The man was searched and found to be unarmed. He was therefore brought to Saladin, who told him to deliver his message, but he replied that Sinan had ordered him to do so only in private. Saladin therefore told everyone to leave except for two officers, but still the man would not give his message. Sinan refused to dismiss his two remaining companions, saying that he regarded them as his own sons. The messenger then turned to the two men and asked them whether they would kill Saladin if ordered to do so in the name of Sinan. "Give us your orders," they said, and drew their swords. Saladin was speechless; and the messenger left, taking with him the two officers. After this, Saladin decided to make peace with Sinan.
This account, if true, would certainly help to explain Saladin's changed attitude to the Nizaris.
At this time Raymond's marriage was in a bad state: his wife Hodierna, sister of Queen Melisende, was headstrong and flighty, and Raymond, who was intensely jealous, tried to keep her shut up like a Muslim woman. Melisende came to Tripoli with her son, the king, to try to effect a reconciliation. In this she was successful, but it was decided that Hodierna should return with her to Jerusalem for a long holiday. The king was to stay on at Tripoli for military reasons, so the two ladies set off for Jerusalem without him and Raymond rode out along the road for a mile or two to escort them. As he returned to his capital a group of Assassins sprang on him and stabbed him to death. Two knights who tried to protect him were also killed. The news of the murders brought the garrison rushing out into the streets; they slaughtered all the Muslims they met, but the attackers escaped. The motive for this assassination is unknown.
After this, not much is heard of the Assassins in the Frankish chronicles for some time. At about this period they came under an obligation to pay tribute to the Templars; possibly this was connected with the murder of Raymond, or it may be the price that Sinan had to pay for bringing hostilities to an end when he came to power. But in 1173 there occurred one of the most surprising events in the whole story of the Nizaris in Syria, for in that year Sinan sent envoys to King Amalric in Jerusalem, proposing an alliance with the Franks against Nur el-Din and hinting that he and his people might convert to Christianity.
Much argument has centred on this amazing proposal, both at the time and subsequently. Was it genuine? Certainly it would have been a momentous step, for the Nizaris were still Muslims, even if heretical ones. Yet study of the Christian gospels was a long-standing tradition in Nizari circles and it seems likely that, for the more intellectually sophisticated Nizaris at least, Christianity was no further from the truth than was Sunni Islam. Sinan may genuinely have believed that he could interpret Christianity esoterically just as he did Islam; in both cases the outward form of the religion was of little consequence compared with this inner meaning, to which the Nizaris alone had the key. As for his people, presumably he trusted to his own prestige and authority to keep their allegiance during the transition.
The story of the would-be conversion is recorded by William of Tyre, whose work as a historian is highly thought of today and forms one of our principal sources of knowledge for the period. At this time he was Chancellor of the Kingdom and was therefore intimately involved in the events which he narrates. The story is therefore doubtless authentic.
To speculate on the might-have-beens of history is notoriously unwise, yet the temptation to try to picture the Nizaris as a Christian sect is almost irresistible. Hodgson suggests that they may have hoped to become a special military Christian order, like the Templars and Hospitallers. This idea recalls the intriguing possibility suggested by some writers, notably Von Hammer, that the organization of the Templars was to some extent modelled on that of the Assassins. Von Hammer's main reason for supposing this seems to have been his strong disapproval of both groups. However, the resemblances are accidental and superficial. Both Nizaris and Templars were, in the broadest sense, religious organizations with a hierarchical structure, but the similarity is not at all close. Both had a Grand Master who enjoyed extensive powers, but this, too, is hardly very significant. The Templar knights wore white, and Von Hammer believes that the Assassins did likewise; but actually the evidence for this is scanty, though it is true that Hasan II wore white when he proclaimed the Resurrection at Alamut.
The main grounds for the supposed resemblance between the Templars and the Assassins, however, seems to have been the Templars alleged heretical tendencies. But if, as seems likely, the Templars were innocent of the charges brought against them the whole argument falls to the ground. What appears to have happened is that the popular imagination played with the idea of a secret society and projected their unconscious fantasies and desires on the Templars; and Philip IV, who disbanded the Templars in France, made use of the resulting hostility as a pretext to satisfy his own greed. There is no evidence that the Templars modelled themselves on the Nizaris or even that they had any real knowledge of the Nizari organization, and the alleged resemblances tell us more about the preoccupations of nineteenth-century historians and antiquaries than they do about either the Nizaris or the Templars. Nevertheless, the legend of the Templars as a secret society possessed of ancient wisdom has persisted among later occultists, especially in France.
Far from having any covert sympathy with the Assassins, the Templars in fact destroyed the possibility of an alliance with them. One of Sinan's conditions for his offer of alliance was that the tribute which the Nizaris paid to the Templars should be remitted. His envoy was favourably received by King Amalric, and started homeward with an escort provided by the king and with the promise of an embassy to follow. But as they were passing Tripoli a Templar knight, one-eyed Walter of Mesnil, acting with the connivance of his Grand Master, ambushed and killed the envoy. Amalric was furious and ordered the Grand Master to hand Walter over for punishment. The Grand Master refused, saying merely that Walter should be sent to the Pope to be judged; but Amalric descended on the Order at Sidon, seized Walter, and threw him into prison at Tyre. It seems that Amalric intended to go to Rome himself next year to demand that the Order be dissolved.
The Assassins recognized that justice had been done and accepted the king's apologies, so that an alliance might still have been concluded; but next year Amalric died. Had he lived, the fate of the kingdom might have been different; not that the alliance with the Assassins would itself have been of decisive importance, but the fact that Amalric was willing to entertain the idea shows the breadth of his vision. The Templars' action, in contrast, shows the narrowness of theirs, and this narrowness was soon to contribute decisively to the loss of the kingdom.
The Nizaris made their peace with Saladin and the Franks found themselves facing a united Islam at a time when their own state was in disarray. Raymond III of Tripoli, son of that Raymond who had been murdered by the Assassins in 1152, became regent; he was able and determined but he could not unite the kingdom. Two parties arose, one composed of the native barons and the Hospitallers, who followed Raymond and who were prepared to reach a sensible accommodation with the Muslims, and the other, aggressively and militantly Christian, composed of the Templars and of newcomers from the West with little understanding of the situation in the East.
The kingdom struggled on for a time but finally met its end at the Battle of Hattin in 1187, when the main part of the Christian forces was destroyed. Within three months Saladin had captured Jerusalem and the Latin Kingdom was at an end.
Conrad had played a vital part in the saving of the Frankish states after the disaster of Hattin. He had been living in Constantinople at the time but had become involved in a murder there; he therefore sailed away secretly with a company of knights to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Places. Arriving at Acre, he discovered to his dismay that it had fallen to Saladin. He therefore sailed north to Tyre, which was also on the point of surrendering; but Conrad's vigour and determination saved the city and with it the Christian presence in Outremer.
Conrad massacred the Muslim prisoners in Tyre: a shabby return for Saladin's generosity in sparing the life of Conrad's father, the aged Marquis of Montferrat, who was Saladin's prisoner. This, perhaps, was Saladin's motive for wishing to have Conrad assassinated - if, indeed, Saladin was, as rumoured, the instigator. Two Assassins, dressed as monks, entered the service of Reynald of Sidon and Balian of Ramlah, who were both in Tyre with Conrad. They waited six months for an opportune moment. At last, as the Count was coming away from the Bishop's residence, they attacked him and stabbed him to death.
According to Abu Firas, Sinan ordered the assassination as a favour to Saladin. Abu Firas's account, however, contains a number of obvious discrepancies and the truth of the matter is unclear. According to one Muslim historian, Saladin did not welcome the death of Conrad, since Conrad was the rival of the even more feared Richard the Lion-Heart. Richard has also been suspected of complicity; according to Saladin's envoy in Tyre the two Assassins confessed under torture that Richard was the instigator, and this was widely believed among the Franks, especially when Richard's friend Count Henry of Champagne married Conrad's widow and succeeded to the throne. But it is unsafe to place much reliance on confessions obtained in this way.
If Saladin was responsible he did not live to profit from his action, for he died the same year, in March. Sinan died in September and was buried at Masyaf. He left the Nizaris of Syria in a strong position, and though this was somewhat weakened in the years that followed they maintained their independence until the Mongol conquest. After Sinan's death, however, Nizari activities in Syria lacked their earlier colourfulness and were more closely controlled by Alamut.