THE ASSASSINS OF ALAMUT: NOTES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Muslim names are a difficult topic; I've not attempted to be scholarly here. For a good discussion of the question, see `Memoire sur les noms Musulmans', by M. Garcin de Tassy, in Journal Asiatique, Ser.5, Vol. 3 (1954), pp. 422-516.
For the history of Iran, see P.M. Sykes, A History of Persia, Vol. 1, and E.G. Browne, A Literary History of Persia, Vols. 1 and 2. An excellent modern short introduction to the history of the period is David Morgan, Mediaeval Persia 1040-1797, in which the story of the Assassins is briefly outlined.
For the early history of Islam, see J.B. Glubb, A Short History of the Arab Peoples.
For B. Lewis's theory of the origin of the Fatimids, see The Origins of Ismailism, pp. 42-54.
Ismaili Theosophy is a vast and complex subject, only touched on briefly in the main text, with further information in the appendices. For further information, see H. Corbin, Histoire de la Philosophie Islamique and H. Feki, Les Idées Religieuses et Philosophiques de l'Ismaelisme Fatimide. Another important source is the collection known as the Guyard Fragments; these are a number of Ismaili texts of mostly uncertain date that were translated and published by the French orientalist S. Guyard in the nineteenth century. Some of these appear to have been composed by the Fatimid Caliphs, while others are probably texts which were used by groups that came together to study Ismaili ideas. For the material in the Appendices, see the preceding references and also Joseph Campbell (1962), The Masks of God, vol. 2, pp. 115ff, and G. de Santillana and H. von Dechend, Hamlet's Mill: An essay on myth and the frame of time.
The main source for the history of the Assassins is M.G.S Hodgson, The Order of Assassins. See also `The Ismaili State', in The Cambridge History of Iran.
Juvaini's History has been translated by J.A. Boyle.
There is a great deal of material about Ismailism in E.G. Browne, op.cit., but his interpretations are somewhat out of date. The other main authority is W. Ivanow, but in reading him one needs to take account of his somewhat idiosyncratic bias, as discussed by Hodgson, op. cit., pp. 31-32 and passim, which makes him unsympathetic to `mysticism'.
For accounts of Ismaili initiation ceremonies, see W. Ivanow, `The Book of the Teacher and the Pupil', in Studies in Early Persian Ismailism, pp. 61-86; also H. Feki, op.cit.
There are several sources for the Syrian period. The Abu Firas stories are to be found in S. Guyard's Un Grand Maitre des Assassins au Temps de Saladin. Other material is in B. Lewis, The Assassins and Hodgson, op.cit. For the quotations from Sinan, see Guyard's Fragment I. For the suggestion that the Nizaris wished to become a Christian military order like the Templars, see Hodgson, op. cit., p. 204; the event is described in William of Tyre's History of the Crusades. For the general background to this period the main source is S. Runciman, A History of the Crusades, Vols. 1 and 2.
For the period of decline at Alamut and the Mongol conquest, see Juvaini's History and Hodgson, op. cit.. Tusi's account of Ismaili ideas is found in the Tassawwurat.
The story of Shams-i-Tabriz as the possible son of Hasan III is told by E.G. Browne, op. cit., II, p. 516. The green bird motif is discussed by Anne-Marie Schimmel in The Mystical Dimensions of Islam, p. 313.
The Institute of Ismaili Studies in London has a large amount of information, including academic publications, about Ismailism both ancient and modern. Their website is well worth looking at for anyone interested in the subject.