Assassins

ASSASSINS. The disparaging term assassins, originating in the Arabic ḥashīshīyah (users of hashish, Cannabis sativa), has been used to designate the followers of the Nizārī Ismāʿīlī branch of Islam. In its original form, from about the twelfth century onward, the name was used by those hostile to the movement to stigmatize the Ismāʿīlīyah of Syria for their alleged use of the drug. The designation, as well as a growing legend about the group, was subsequently transmitted to Europe by Western chroniclers of the Crusades and travelers such as Marco Polo. The legend portrayed the Nizārī Ismāʿīlīyah as a religious "order of assassins" ruled by the diabolical "Old Man of the Mountain," who incited them to murder through the use of drugs and the creation of an illusory sense of paradise. Reinforced by early Western scholarship, the term and the distorted view of the Nizārī Ismāʿīlīyah became general, until disproved by modern research.

The Nizārī branch of the Ismāʿīlīyah had its origin in a succession dispute following the death of the Fatimid Ismāʿīlī imam al-Mustanṣir in 1094. Those who gave their allegiance to Nizār, al-Mustanṣir's eldest son, as the designated successor and imam organized themselves locally in various parts of Iran and Syria by building on and extending the groundwork already laid there during the Fatimid period.

Particularly in Iran, the Nizārīyah faced markedly changed circumstances, owing to the presence of the powerful, militantly Sunnī Turkish dynasty of the Seljuks. In addition to the hostility prevailing in political and military spheres, the Nizārī Ismāʿīlīyah, like their predecessors under the Fatimids, became the object of theological and intellectual attacks, the most significant one being that of the Sunnī theologian al-Ghazālī (d. 1111). This climate of threat accentuated a sense of isolation and prompted direct political and military action by the Nizārīyah against leaders of the Seljuk state, which in turn caused popular Sunnī feeling to harden further against them.

The focal point of the Nizārī Ismāʿīlī movement was the fortress of Alamut in the Elburz Mountains of northern Iran. This fortress, captured by the famous Ismāʿīlī leader Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ in 1090, now became the center for a number of growing strongholds that were established through military and diplomatic means. In time, these centers became part of a network in Iran as well as in Syria. According to Nizārī tradition, Ḥasan acted as the representative of the imam and organized the various settlements. This process of consolidation provided a basis for what was to become a Nizārī Ismāʿīlī state incorporating both Iranian and Syrian strongholds and ruled from Alamut by Ismāʿīlī imams descended from Nizār, who assumed actual control after the initial period of establishment. Though under constant threat, the state thrived for more than 150 years, when confrontation with the expanding Mongol power led to its downfall, the demolition of its principal strongholds, and a general and widespread massacre of the Ismāʿīlīyah.

The history of the Nizārī Ismāʿīlīyah following the destruction of their state and the dispersal of their leaders in Iran and elsewhere is little known. In Syria, as in Iran, they continued to survive persecution. The Nizārī sources speak of an uninterrupted succession of imams in different parts of Iran and, in the fifteenth century, the emergence of new activity that led to a further growth of the Nizārī Ismāʿīlīyah in parts of India and Central Asia. In modern times, the community has witnessed a remarkable resurgence under its imams, Sulṭān Muḥammad Shāh, Aga Khan III (1877–1957) and the present imam, Shāh Karīm Aga Khan (1957–), both of whom have also played a major role in promoting development activities in Muslim and Third World countries. The Ismāʿīlīyah are currently found in various countries in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and the West.

While still articulating the Shiʿi Ismāʿīlī vision of Islam developed under the Fatimids, the Nizārīyah laid particular emphasis on the principle of taʿlīm, authoritative teaching, and on the cosmic and metaphysical significance of the imam, whose role it was to impart that teaching. These fundamental notions acquired a more immediate relevance in conditions calling for greater discipline and obedience. Unfortunately, few Ismāʿīlī sources of the period have survived, and it is often difficult on the basis of available materials to gauge the precise significance of doctrinal development.

One religious event highlighted in the sources that came to have particular doctrinal consequence was the qiyāmah. Although it appeared to outsiders as a declaration of reform, it was essentially an affirmation of a religious impetus present in Ismāʿīlī doctrine from the beginning. Providing the culmination of Ismāʿīlī sacred history, the event marked the primacy of the spiritual and inner meaning of religious acts. The outward performance of ritual elaborated in the sharīʿah, or religious law, was not abrogated as is generally thought; as Henry Corbin, the noted French scholar of esoteric forms of Islam, has pointed out, the Ismāʿīlīyah affirm positive religion in order to inspire believers to exceed it. The symbolic meaning of the qiyāmah was this affirmation of the esoteric basis of Ismāʿīlī thought, the public proclamation of which came to represent a contrast with the sharīʿah-mindedness of those scholars of other schools who had developed a different synthesis of Islam.

The doctrine also projected a spiritual basis for the nature of the imam and for the inner transformation effected in the being of individual followers as they sought to acquire this understanding. Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī (d. 1274), the noted Shīʿī scholar, was one of those attracted by the intellectual milieu of the Ismāʿīlī state and during his stay there became an exponent of Ismāʿīlī doctrine. Within the esoteric perspective, according to his works, the physical bond between imam and follower was to be transcended by the development of a spiritual bond, so that in addition to acceptance of the historical and formal aspect of the imam's role, the believer would also be led to a recognition of the ha-aiqah, the aspect of Islam that, in the Ismāʿīlī view, complemented the shariʿah and constituted the highest level of reality in Islam.

The goal of religious life offered to the individual Ismāʿīlī by this vision was a continuing quest for inner transformation and a graduation to successively higher levels of spiritual growth and understanding. In the period following the fall of Alamūt, the inward, personal search for religious meaning would lead to increasing interaction between Ismāʿīlī doctrine and some of the principles of Sufism.

Aga Khan; Imamate; Shiism, Article on Ismāʿīlīyah.

The standard modern work on the Nizārī Ismāʿīlī state is Marshall G. S. Hodgson's The Order of Assassins: The Struggle of the Early Nizari Ismaīlis against the Islamic World (1955; reprint, New York, 1980), of which an excellent summation will be found in his article entitled "The Ismāʿīlī State," in The Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 5, edited by J. A. Boyle (Cambridge, Mass., 1968), pp. 422–482. The legend and its transmission are discussed in Bernard Lewis's The Assassins: A Radical Sect in Islam (London, 1967) and in an unpublished paper by Amin Haji, "The Term 'Assassin' and Its Transmission in Muslim and European Sources" (Institute of Ismaili Studies, London, 1984). Henry Corbin's work on the Ismāʿīlīyah represents the most perceptive analysis of its esoteric dimension; articles relevant to Nizārī teachings are contained in his Cyclical Time and Ismāʿīlī Gnosis (London, 1983). Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī's Taṣawwurāt has been edited and translated by W. Ivanow as Rawdatuʾt-Taslim, Commonly Called Taṣawwurāt (Leiden, 1950). For the Ismāʿīlīyah in general, see the various essays in Ismāʿīlī Contributions to Islamic Culture, edited by Seyyed Hossein Nasr (Tehran, 1977).

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