The missionary must have a deep knowledge of both the exoteric and the esoteric aspects of religion. In character he must be kindly and compassionate, modest, reasonable, noble, generous, and truthful; he must have an outstanding intellectual capacity, be capable of keeping secrets, and be an agreeable companion, with a noble soul to lend dignity to his manner and to attract people to him and allow him to get on with them. He should associate only with ascetic and religious men and have nothing to do with the dissolute. He must not fool about or tell dirty jokes or use bad language. In short, he was expected to be a paragon of every conceivable virtue, and it is permissible to doubt if any such individuals actually existed. However, at least we know what constituted the Ismaili ideal, and Hasan, in particular, seems to have embodied a good deal of it.
In recompense for the high demands made of him, the missionary was given a good deal of authority over his flock, but this, too was a source of possible spiritual danger and he was forbidden to use his position for his own advantage or to show favouritism. He was expected to be an affectionate but impartial father-figure. In all of this his role was that of the Imam writ small, for he was the Imam's representative and vicar on earth.
In order to preach the gospel, the missionary would settle in a town and practise some profession from among his stock of skills, meanwhile building up a local reputation for probity and piety. Gradually he would gather round him a circle of followers, among whom he would seek the men who seemed most apt to receive new ideas. The missionary would lead up to these ideas cautiously and obliquely, always ready to change the subject if people grew suspicious or hostile. He would speak of religion as a hidden science, and would ask questions such as: Why are there seven cervical and twelve dorsal vertebrae? Why has the face seven apertures but the rest of the body only two? (These questions were designed to focus the listeners' minds on the idea that the universe is a magnified man and Man is the universe in miniature; the number seven is particularly important in the Ismaili scheme - see below.) As his audience began to respond, the missionary would grow bolder and begin to hint that spiritual salvation depended on pondering these matters and reaching a true understanding of them.
When at last he found a man ready to take the step of becoming an Ismaili, the missionary would administer an oath of allegiance. The neophyte promised his loyalty and undertook to pay a financial contribution, and he swore never to divulge the Ismaili secrets to any unauthorised person. Becoming an Ismaili, therefore, was a solemn business, and was much more than merely giving assent to a series of religious propositions. It was an initiation into a secret society, which might well make the convert liable to considerable danger but also opened for him the path to salvation.
Most historians of Ismailism seem to think that initiation was entirely a matter of imparting esoteric doctrines about the interpretation of the Koran and similar matters, but there may have been more to it than that. There are close parallels between Ismaili and Sufi initiation ceremonies, and in the case of Sufism, at least, the esoteric knowledge included instruction in meditation techniques. Such techniques are generally passed on orally; this is true not only of Sufism but also of Hinduism and Mahayana Buddhism. It is therefore very likely that techniques of this kind were taught during the Ismaili initiation ceremony. There is an early Ismaili book which gives a novelistic account of the conversion and initiation of a young man. Meditation instruction is not mentioned openly, but one page is written in a cipher which is quite different from that used in many books dating from the Fatimid period. So far no one has managed to break it, but it is tempting to guess that it contains highly esoteric meditation instruction.
The Ismaili initiation procedure provoked a lot of hostile comment from the Ismailis' enemies, who claimed that candidates were led step by step to the ultimate abandonment of all religious belief and moral restraint. The Ismailis were also accused of having mercenary motives, for - according to their critics - the level to which an adept could rise in the hierarchy was determined not by his knowledge but by how much he was prepared to pay.
However, the real nature of Ismaili initiation was rather different. It proceeded at a pace which was not the same for everyone but depended on the aptitude of the pupil. There were several stages, which were symbolised in physiological terms derived from contemporary theories of embryology, the idea being that the spiritual development of the candidate paralleled that of his earlier development in the womb. The candidate had to swear an elaborate oath, promising loyalty, obedience, and the preservation of secrecy about Ismail doctrines, under pain of terrible retribution if he renegued on his obligation. (All this is oddly reminiscent of modern Masonic initiation.) Should he default, God would abandon him in this world and the next and he would be left to his own devices.
Altogether, there were many more threats of retribution than promises of felicity and the general tone was uncompromising and tough. Candidates for initiation would have needed to be serious and determined - to ensure this, of course, was the purpose of the oath. There is certainly no hint of future licentiousness to draw the candidate into the Ismaili fold, nor is there any question of denying religion.
The candidate was indeed expected to be nearly as admirable as the missionary, not only morally but also physically, for he must not be ugly or suffer from any obvious deformity, nor must he have any of the physiognomic features supposed to indicate defects of character. At least for the more advanced initiations, the master of ceremonies must be at least forty years of age, for Ismailis younger than this were not allowed to pass on secret knowledge. At least two witnesses, as well as an assistant, had to be present, and the assistant must also be at least forty years old (not to mention handsome, eloquent, pleasant, patient, and so forth). The initiation ceremony was elaborate and included numerous symbolic acts, again reminiscent of Masonic ritual.
From Ismaili texts of the time there emerges a picture of Ismailism that is very different from that painted by its Sunni critics. Ismailism appears to have been a serious attempt to raise human consciousness to a higher plane. Whether this is possible at all, and, if so, whether the Ismaili method was a good one for achieving that goal, are open questions, but at least we can say that the Ismailis were not the irreligious libertines they are often represented as being. Far from offering its adepts a holiday from morality, the Ismaili Proclamation, as it was called, summoned people to a dedicated life of service and self-improvement. It promised a great deal, but the way was hard and the goal was a wholly spiritual one.
The Ismailis were based in Cairo, and claimed descent from Fatima, the daughter of the Prophet Muhammad. After his death in 632 CE Islam was ruled in succession by four Orthodox Caliphs, the last of whom was Ali, the Prophet's cousin and Fatima's husband. Ali found himself embroiled in bitter struggles concerning the succession and eventually he was murdered at the door of the mosque in Kufa; not long after this his son Husayn, the grandson of the Prophet, was killed in a battle in which he was enormously outnumbered. This led to the great schism in Islam between the Shia (which means Party of Ali) and the Sunni. The Shiites are still passionately devoted to Husayn's memory and Passion Plays to commemorate his martyrdom are performed annually in Iran. Today, Iran is Shiite, but in the eleventh century it was officially Sunni.
The Shiites regard Ali as the First Imam. The Imam is a spiritual authority of enormous prestige; indeed, within some of the Shiite sects he takes on quasi-divine status. The Imamate is passed on from father to son, but the succession of Visible Imams became broken at some point in the past and the Imam is now Hidden. This much is agreed by all, but there are differences of opinion about the details of the succession. The main body of the Shiites think that there were twelve Visible Imams and are therefore called Twelvers; but others regard Ismail as the seventh, and last, Visible Imam, and are accordingly known as Ismailis or Seveners.
This dispute within Shiism occurred before the foundation of Cairo, which was accomplished early in the tenth century by the Fatimids, who were probably Iranians. They claimed descent from Fatima. The authenticity of this claim has been questioned but at least one modern historian, Bernard Lewis, thinks it was probably genuine. When Ubaidullah, the first Fatimid Caliph, died in 934 he was succeeded by Qaim, who is supposed to have been his son; however, Lewis suggests that he was really descended from Ismail. There is support for this romantic idea from secret Ismaili works and from the Druze scriptures. (The Druze, a Syrian sect, were a later offshoot from the Ismaili tradition.)
As a result of these events, by the end of the tenth century there was established in Egypt a reborn Imamate, claiming descent from Ali and Fatima via Ismail. This was a source to which Ismailis could look for guidance and inspiration. From this centre missionaries were sent out to the rest of the Muslim world, but especially to Iran, which was thought most likely to be receptive to Ismailism. Hasan, usually known by the sobriquet Hasan-i-Sabbah (Hasan the Sevener), was one of these.
The Ismailis were preparing a revolt against the Seljuqs, but they did not intend to form a single army and march to power as the Fatimids had done in Egypt; given the different situation in Iran, this would hardly have been possible. Rather, they hoped for a multiplicity of risings planned to occur simultaneously, which would deprive the Seljuqs of their base and be impossible to crush by virtue of their widespread nature. This revolt would have been essentially urban. But in the eleventh century the plan was to take on a different character, with a shift in emphasis from town to country. This development occurred thanks to Hasan-i-Sabbah.
Hasan was born at Qom, still today a major Shiite religious centre, and was brought up as a Twelver. His youth and early manhood, however, were spent at Ray (now a suburb of Tehran), which was Sunni at the time. He was an earnest seeker after truth, and is said to have been passionately fond of study from the age of seven (a significant age), becoming learned in mathematics, astronomy (and therefore astrology), and occult matters.
At about the age of seventeen he encountered an Ismaili missionary called Amir Zarrab. No doubt a young man of Hasan's ability seemed a find prize, and Amir Zarrab tried hard to convert him, but Hasan was not convinced. Nevertheless, after Amir Zarrab's departure Hasan continued to read Ismaili books and his mind was troubled.
Then, as often seems to have happened in the lives of mediaeval people, his conversion was brought about by a near-fatal illness. Alarmed at the possibility that he might die without having realized the Truth, he sought out another Ismaili, nicknamed the Saddler, and asked for further instruction. Fully convinced at last of the truth of the Ismaili doctrines, he took the oath of allegiance.
The senior Ismaili in Iran, Abu Malik of Isfahan, came to Ray soon after this and was impressed by Hasan. He drew him into Ismaili activities and, a few years later, sent him to Cairo, where he was well received. However, there were political tensions in Cairo at this time, which were to have momentous consequences for Hasan some years later, and there is a suggestion that he got into some kind of difficulty there. In 1080 he returned to Iran, surviving a shipwreck on the Syrian coast in the process, and became very active as an Ismaili propagandist. He travelled extensively, especially in the north-west of the country, and he had a large number of men under his command who covered other areas. He was by now a wanted man, but he evaded his would-be captors, and, in 1090, carried out the coup which made him famous and launched the Assassins on their romantic career: he gained possession of the Castle of Alamut.
In the Muslim calendar the year in which Hasan gained possession of the castle was 483. By a strange coincidence, in the `abjad' system of number-letter correspondences this date gives the name of the stronghold, Aluh Amut. This occult correspondence was naturally not lost on the Ismailis, who made much of it. But the name itself is something of a puzzle. It is usually said to mean `eagle's teaching', and there is a story that a monarch, out hunting with his falcon, had the Rock suggested to him as a suitable place for a castle by seeing his bird land upon it. Another possible meaning is `eagle's nest', which seems intuitively more probable. (Indeed, one of the first things I saw when I visited the Rock in 1966 was an eagle soaring out from the summit.) However, at least one authority denies that the name has anything to do with eagles at all.
Whether or not the name Alamut is connected with eagles, there is undoubtedly something aquiline about the character of Hasan, whom I cannot help picturing as a gaunt figure with piercing eyes and a great beak of a nose. From his eyrie in Alamut he made himself respected and feared throughout much of Iran, and he successfully resisted all attempts to dislodge him. He seems to have built new fortifications on the Rock and is said to have constructed vast store chambers for grain, honey, and water.
Owing to the thoroughness with which the Mongols destroyed the castle we have no accurate information about this work. One of the most puzzling questions is how the castle was supplied with water. At present the stream that supplies the fields of Qasir Khan at the foot of the Rock does not flow anywhere near the castle, though possibly its course was different nine hundred years ago. There are stories of water being brought in lead pipes, but this seems improbable and in any case would not afford any security in a siege. An interesting suggestion put forward by Peter Willey is that the curious channel that can be seen running across the south face of the Rock was built to collect rain water and feed it into chambers cut in the cliff. This does seem possible. At any rate, we can be pretty sure that massive engineering works of some kind were carried out to provide water and were successful, for Alamut held out in the face of several determined attempts to capture it.
Hasan became known as a severe and austere ruler. He remained within his house, writing, thinking, and planning; he is said to have gone out only twice, and to have gone up on the roof only once. At one time, when things were difficult, he sent his womenfold away to another castle, where they had to spin like the other women, and he never brought them back. He had both his sons executed, one for drinking wine, the other on a charge of murder which later proved false. Von Hammer, the nineteenth-century historian who attributed all kinds of wickedness to the Assassins, cited these sentences as evidence of Ismaili depravity and Hasan's want of natural affection, but it seems more plausible to regard them as instances of his impartiality. They also make it clear that in Hasan's time the Muslim ritual law (sharia) was enforced at Alamut with full rigour.
Under Hasan's leadership the Ismailis prospered. Other castles were acquired, some by capture, some by purchase or negotiation, and the Ismailis thus came to dominate quite a large area. There also continued to be Ismaili cells in nearly every Iranian city, especially Isfahan, where the Ismailis had acquired a stronghold just outside the city. However, the Isfahan centre was captured by the Turks in 1107. The wife of the Ismaili chief decked herself in her jewels and flung herself from the battlements; the Chief himself was captured, paraded through the town, and then skinned alive. This left Hasan as undisputed head of the Ismailis in Iran, and the Seljuqs mounted a protracted campaign against him. In 1118 Alamut was besieged, and Hasan had a hard time persuading his followers not to surrender. But at that momemt news came of the death of the Sultan; despite the commander's pleas, the army dispersed and Alamut was saved.
According to the story, Hasan and Omar Khayyam are supposed to have been fellow-students of Nizam al-Mulk, and the three agreed that whichever of them should gain a powerful position first should help the others. When Nizam al-Mulk eventually rose to be Vizier under Malik Shah, Omar Khayyam declined any office and asked only for a pension, but Hasan demanded a place at court. Here he did so well that he seemed likely to out-shine Nizam al-Mulk himself. The Sultan asked Nizam al-Mulk to prepare a general account of State revenues; Nizam al-Mulk said the task would take two years, but Hasan said he could do it in only a few weeks. Hasan, naturally, was given the commission, and was provided with all the necessary facilities; but when the day came for him to present his figures he was forestalled by the wily Nizam al-Mulk, who managed to sabotage his papers and poured scorn on him when he became confused. Hasan was thus disgraced and had to leave court, and this discomfiture was the motive for his ultimate revenge.
This romantic tale is almost certainly one of the many legends that have accumulated around Hasan-i-Sabbah. That this is so is evident from chronology: Omar Khayyam and Hasan died at almost the same time (1123 and 1124 respectively), whereas Nizam al-Mulk was born in 1017 and moreover seems to have finished his education and entered public life at an early age. If Hasan and Omar Khayyam had been Nizam al-Mulk's fellow students, therefore, they must have both been centenarians when they died, which is possible but unlikely. Even though the story is almost certainly apocryphal, however, it does seem that Hasan and Nizam al-Mulk met before Hasan's visit to Egypt; the Vizier evidently knew a good deal about Hasan, since, as we have seen, he ordered his arrest. There are thus straightforward reasons why Hasan should have wanted Nizam al-Mulk out of the way.
As for the legend, it may be that Nizam al-Mulk has been confused with a later, less famous, vizier, who almost certainly did meet Hasan when both men were students. This minister, Anushirvan ibn Khalid, says that he met and studied with some of the chief Ismaili leaders, especially "a man of Ray, who travelled throughout the world, and whose profession was that of a secretary". This was almost certainly Hasan-i-Sabbah.
Although the legend seems untenable in its full-blown form, it leaves open the intriguing possibility that Hasan and Omar Khayyam were fellow students. Unfortunately we know too little about the lives of both men to say anything definite about this, but it may be significant that Omar Khayyam has been said to be an Ismaili.
Murder as a political weapon was not, of course, an Ismaili invention, and indeed it appears that a number of groups in Iran were making use of it at the time. The Ismailis, however, undoubtedly took the trend further than most. They may have believed that it was more humane to kill one man selectively than a multitude in a battle. In any case, given the fact that they were so enormously outnumbered by their enemies, terrorism was a logical enough expedient.
It is usually said that a special corps of assassins - the fidais - existed, but this is doubtful, at least until a much later date. Marco Polo, who visited the site of Alamut in the thirteenth century, after its destruction by the Mongols, relates the romantic legend of how the fidais were trained by the Grand Master. The `Old Man', as Marco Polo calls him, following the Crusader usage, was said to have constructed a fantastic pleasure garden, flowing with wine, honey, milk, and water, and populated by beautiful women. This was a representation of Paradise as described in the Koran. The Old Man was supposed to drug his future Assassins and bring them, unconscious, into the garden; after a time they were once again rendered insensible and brought out into the ordinary world. They were thus convinced that they had been given a foretaste of the joys to come if they obeyed the Old Man's orders, which they naturally did unquestioningly, certain that they would once more find themselves in Paradise after their death.
It need hardly be said that this is a total fantasy. There is no need to suppose that any such elaborate method of preparation was needed; like other Muslim soldiers the assassins would be told, and would unquestioningly believe, that if they were killed they would go straight to Paradise. A similar belief motivates modern suicide bombers among the Palestinians and other minority groups who lack other means of getting at their enemies. Death on an assassination mission was counted a great honour by the Ismailis. There is an often-repeated story of the mother of a fidai who rejoiced greatly and put on her best clothes when she heard that her son had been killed on a mission, but changed into mourning when he came home safely after all.
The fidais were at least not underhand in their assassinations; they did not poison their victims or stab them in the back in dark alleys, but killed them openly in public. A favourite occasion seems to have been at Friday prayers in the mosque. Publicity, in fact, was an important part of their aim, and they were successful in attaining this. Prominent men took to wearing armour under their clothes, and sometimes the Ismailis could achieve their purpose merely by a threat. Sultan Sanjar made a truce with Alamut, persuaded, it is said, by a dagger thrust into the ground next to his pillow. And an amusing story concerns a professor of theology who made a practice of reviling the `heretics' of Alamut. At length, one of his students, who had impressed him by the attention he paid to his lectures, revealed himself as a fidai and offered the professor alternative inducements to mend his ways: a dagger or a bag of gold. The professor wisely chose the gold; and, when subsequently twitted about the reason for his changed attitude to the Ismailis, he replied that he had been convinced of his error by arguments that were `both weighty and pointed'.
Assassination as a political weapon may be hard to justify morally (although what about the bomb plot to kill Hitler?), and certainly it was this practice that made the Ismailis' name so execrated among both Muslims and Christians. Even so, one cannot help sensing the intensity of their devotion to their cause and the feeling of comradeship that inspired their heroism. For heroism it was: few fidais, survived, and their deaths were seldom easy.
The Fatimid caliph Mustansir had designated his eldest son Nizar as the next Imam, and according to Ismaili tradition this decision could not be revoked. But towards the end of his reign Mustansir lost control of his empire and effective power passed to an army officer called Badr al-Jamali. When Mustansir died, in 1094, Badr's son Afdal, who was now in effective control, put another of Mustansir's sons, Mustali, on the the throne. Nizar, not surprisingly, objected, and a brief civil war ensued; but Nizar was defeated, imprisoned, and eventually executed.
The Cairo Ismailis now accepted Mustali as Imam, but the Ismailis in Iran, led by Hasan-i-Sabbah, remained loyal to Nizar, and in so doing broke away from the political and spiritual tutelage of the Fatimids and launched forth on their own strange course. From this time they were generally known as Nizaris.
We do not know the reasons for this decision, though personal loyalty to Nizar does not seem to have been important. Perhaps Hasan had come into conflict with Badr in Cairo, as later Nizari accounts suggest, but more probably the motives for the schism were less personal. There were, it is true, genuine doctrinal reasons why the Iranian Ismailis should not accept the revoking of the designation of Nizar as Imam, for it was just this question that had led to the separation of the Ismaili sect in the first place, but no doubt politics and national pride entered into it as well. The Iranian Ismailis were fiercely independent, already in revolt against the Turkish invaders, and probably unenthusiastic about owning allegiance to a foreign power, especially since Badr's troops, on whom he relied for his position, were largely Turkish.
Whatever the exact reasons for the break, Hasan's authority ensured that it was generally accepted among the Iranian Ismailis, who henceforth were pretty well universally adherents of Nizar; and though there was at first some dissent in Syria, before long the Syrian Isamailis too were loyal to the new dispensation.
Allegiance to Nizar raised an important practical question, however: where was the Imam? After Nizar's death there was no obvious successor, but it was a central part of the Ismaili position that there must always be an Imam somewhere, otherwise everything would fall to pieces. For the moment the Imam was regarded as "Hidden"; later he was to stage a most dramatic reappearance.
One might have expected that Hasan himself would claim to be the Imam, but he never did so, and indeed it is said that when his followers wrote up a fanciful genealogy for him he threw it contemptuously in the river, remarking that he would rather be the Imam's favoured servant than his degenerate son. The title generally applied to Hasan was Hujja, "Proof". This was the name of a high rank in the Ismaili hierarchy and signified a senior missionary responsible for a particular territory. But the title could also refer to someone who served as a link with a more exalted level in the hierachy; Hujja could be applied to Hasan in this sense as well, and eventually he seems to have been regarded as the Imam's official representative.
Until the end of of his long life, Hasan remained in Alamut, a lonely and severe figure, administering his strange realm, ordering assassinations, thinking, writing, planning, and waiting... for what? Did he believe that a son of the dead Nizar would one day appear to claim the Imamate? If so, how was he to be recognized as genuine? Or had Hasan perhaps given up all hope of finding a physical Imam, and now conceived of the Imam as existing on a spiritual (though nonetheless real) plane of existence?
My own guess, for it can be nothing more, is that the last possibility is the most likely. The Hasan whose character has come down to us is very far from naive, and he is totally uncompromising in his rejection of makeshift second-best solutions. Such a man must surely have realized that no genuine Imam was likely to appear in the foreseeable future, and that all the Nizaris could do was to preserve the Imamate as an idea. The most reliable information we have suggests that this was Hasan's position, and that in his time there was no specific teaching at Alamut about when or how the Imam would appear. Indeed, even Hasan's second successor, Muhammad I, issued coins bearing simply the name of Nizar, with no suggestion of the existence of any later Imam.
To the modern mind it may be tempting to suppose that Hasan was merely cynical, and used the legend of the vanished Imam for his own purposes while himself disbelieving in it. But this, I think, would be totally to misconceive the mediaeval outlook in general and Hasan's character in particular. All that we know of Hasan suggests that he was wholly sincere in his beliefs, and I am sure it would be a complete mistake to discount them. There is something almost Ciceronian about Hasan, an unyielding firmness and integrity which, though it may not inspire our affection, cannot but compel our respect.
Hasan wrote a great deal but little of what he wrote has come down to us. His style was characteristically terse. From what can be surmised about his teaching, it seems to have differed somewhat, at least in emphasis, from that of the Fatimid Ismailis. The literature from Cairo contained much mystical speculation about the nature of the Imam. Hasan's Imam is more of an authoritarian figure, who seems to be as much a ruler and a law-giver as a mystagogue. Probably this change in emphasis was partly due to the situation of the Nizaris in Iran. They were broken up and scattered in small groups throughout the country, and there was a need for strong leadership from Alamut if they were to maintain their cohesion. No doubt, too, men tended to cast the Imam in their own image, and Hasan seems to have been by nature as well as by necessity a stern disciplinarian, so that his version of the Imam's character was a severe one.
By now the Nizaris were ceasing to be an important power in the cities and were becoming an enclave within the Seljuq state. The Seljuqs had for some twenty years largely ceased hostilities against the Nizaris; soon after the accession of Bozorg-Ummid warfare broke out again, but the Nizaris held their own. They were also responsible for a number of assassinations, including that of the Abbasid Caliph Mustarshid, who was at the time a prisoner of the Seljuqs. At a more local level, fighting went on intermittently with the neighbouring city of Qazvin.
Bozorg-Ummid, though evidently able enough militarily, seems not to have contributed anything to the community intellectually, and in this respect the Nizaris don't seem to have been very active during the rules of either Bozorg-Ummid or his son and successor, Muhammad I, who came to power in 1138. By this time the Nizari state had settled into its own pattern of existence, with a hereditary succession of rulers. An early event in Muhammad I's reign was the assassination of Caliph Rashid, son of the Caliph Mustarshid who had been assassinated earlier; Rashid was under house arrest in Isfahan at the time. Great celebrations were held in Alamut on this occasion, but the people of Isfahan took revenge by massacring anyone who they thought was an Ismaili.
Warfare with the Seljuqs continued under Muhammad I, though at a reduced intensity, and the Nizaris captured a number of new fortresses. But all this activity was relatively petty and there was beginning to be an increasing discrepancy between the original high hopes of the community and what had actually been achieved. Before long, however, the situation was to change dramatically, and the Nizaris' patience was to reap an unlooked-for reward.