If you've spent any time in the cinema
recently, you may have noticed that Hollywood has a habit of glamourising pretty
much every profession it touches. For example, I'm confident that very few archaeologists
have ever recovered priceless treasure raiding tombs; you'd have to be incredibly handy
with LinkedIn to find a Harvard professor with a focus criss-crossing the globe thwarting
the efforts of ancient secret societies; and your average hacker is more likely
to be sitting in their parents' basement searching for COD exploits rather than taking down
the FBI from their swanky penthouse apartment. Another commonly misrepresented job is that of
the assassin. These guys crop up so often in TV, film, and computer games you'd be
forgiven for thinking assassination's a booming industry and fantastic career
choice. There's Jason Bourne, Agent 47, Deadpool, Leon the Professional, John
Wick, and that annoying guy from Game of Thrones who always refers to himself
in the third person to name just a few. A quick look at your favourite internet job board will soon show you that assassination gigs are
actually pretty thin on the ground at the moment. But, for whatever reason, humanity remains
morbidly fascinated with the idea of a deadly assassin emerging from the shadows to delete some
random unsuspecting VIP with extreme prejudice. Assassination in one form or another has been
around for as long as there have been humans. But the modern interpretation of the master
assassin - a skilled, stealthy killer who murders important people for religious or
political reasons - can be traced back in time almost 1000 years to a historical
faction called the Order of Assassins. Led by a mysterious individual known to
outsiders as the Old Man of the Mountain, the Order of Assassins became famous for eliminating
some of the most powerful people on the planet with apparent ease. They operated in the Middle
East between the 11th and 13th centuries, during which time they were responsible for
literally hundreds of high profile assassinations. They became so synonymous with the concept
of killing for political reasons that they're the reason we call it 'assassination' in the
first place - more on that later in the video. If you're a gamer you may know that the Assassins
Creed franchise borrows heavily from the Order of Assassins, but the real organisation
was very different to the fictional one. The real Assassins weren't some kind of global
peacekeeping force seeking to improve the lot of mankind one high profile murder at a time. They
were simply a group of like-minded individuals doing what they needed to do to survive in a
hostile world. It just so happens that what they need to do to survive was murder a lot of very
important people. But I’m getting ahead of myself. In the early days, the group we now call the
Order of Assassins (that name came much later) weren't killers at all - they were deeply
religious members of a brand new branch of Islam that formed in the late eleventh century after
a succession crisis in Fatimid Caliphate (a powerful Ismaili Shia Muslim dynasty that
ruled much of North Africa and the Middle East around the turn of the second millennium).
The seat of the Caliphate's power was in Egypt, and it was in Cairo that the succession crisis
took place between two of the Caliphate's princes. The eldest of the two princes, Nizar, was passed
over for rule in favour of his younger brother, al-Mustali. After a brief power
struggle, Prince Nizar was executed, and his followers were forced to flee
east into Persia in modern day Iran. There, they founded a new branch of Shia
Islam called Nizari Isma'ilism under the guidance of a charismatic missionary by the
name of Hassan-I Sabbah. But life wasn't easy for the followers of this new doctrine. At the
time, Persia was occupied by the powerful Seljuk Empire. As Sunni Muslims, the Seljuks
considered Nizari beliefs to be heretical, a view that was also shared by
the country’s Shia minority. But Hassan was a devoted and capable missionary, and he spent years travelling Persia, discreetly
spreading the word of Nizari Isma'ilism and attracting new followers to the cause. The trouble
was, he was almost too good - his activities eventually attracted the attention of the ruling
Seljuks, and a warrant was issued for his arrest. Hassan was forced into hiding in the
mountains in the north of Persia, but he didn’t stay there for long. He was all
too aware that his ability to gain more followers would be somewhat hampered if he spent
the rest of his life living in a cave, so he set about searching for a new base
of operations from which he could safely grow his fledgling religious order.
Soon enough, he found just the place. Alamut Castle was an imposing mountain fortress in
northern Persia surrounded on all sides by sheer cliffs and reachable only by a single narrow
track. It was considered to be essentially impregnable, a notion backed up by the fact it had
never been captured by military means in the more than 200 years since its construction.
As far as Hassan was concerned, it was perfect - a stronghold he could defend against an
attacking army even with just a few hundred men. There was one small problem though - being
smack in the middle of enemy territory, Alamut castle was already occupied by
the very men Hassan was busy hiding from. Taking the castle by force wasn't an option -
despite his successes on the recruitment front, the Nizaris had nowhere near
enough men for an assault. That left Hassan in what seemed
to be an impossible position. But, as we're going to find out, he had
a bit of a habit of making a mockery of impossible situations, and his solution to
this one was incredibly simple - he strolled up to the castle's Seljuk Lord and politely
explained that he, Hassan, was now in charge. And here’s the *really* crazy
part... that actually worked. You see, before Hassan went all peaky blinders
and claimed that Alamut Castle was now under new management, he despatched several of his
best men to infiltrate the nearby villages, where they quietly began to convert as many
people as they could to the Nizari cause. Over time, some of Hassan's men were able
to secure jobs within the castle itself, and eventually Hassan was able to sneak inside
disguised as a school teacher. Slowly but surely, more and more people within the castle walls
were convinced to switch their allegiance. The plan took the best part of two years
to pull off, but by the time Hassan made his move and revealed his true identity, most of
the castle's soldiers had already been turned. The fortress was taken from
the disbelieving Seljuk Lord without a single drop of blood being spilled,
and Hassan not only spared the man's life, he actually sent him on his way with a good chunk of
cash as compensation for the loss of the castle. Not that this generosity helped all that much -
the Seljuks immediately sent an army to reclaim the fort, but, just as Hassan had predicted, he
and his men were able to take advantage of its natural bottlenecks to defend it,
despite being heavily outnumbered. Over the following years, the Nizaris sought
out and captured dozens of other strategic strongholds across Northern Persia, creating
weird exclaves *inside* the Seljuk Empire. But the more the Nizari grew, the more attention
they attracted not just from the Seljuks, but also from other nearby powers - the Abbasid
and Fatimid caliphates, the Ayyubid empire, and even Christian Crusaders who at the time were
making regular forays into the Holy Land. Hassan's Nizaris were vastly outnumbered by pretty much all
of them, and the threat of attack was constant. Once again, Hassan was left with a seemingly
impossible challenge - namely, how to defend his militarily weak mini-state from the far
larger forces of his growing list of enemies. The answer, as you may have guessed, involved
the kinds of tactics the Nizari state, which eventually came to be
known as the Order of Assassins, is famous for today. Hassan had no hope of
threatening the huge armies of his enemies… but he what he *could* do was
threaten the men that led them. He began training his bravest, most competent
followers in a brand of warfare the world had never seen before. Known as Fida’i, Hassan's
assassins used stealth, disguise, misdirection, and infiltration to directly target
enemy military, political, and religious leaders. It was pretty ingenious really - to
attack the Nizari - even with an overwhelming force that was guaranteed victory - was
to place a giant target on your own back. It was asymmetric warfare at its most effective,
and with it, the vastly outnumbered Nizari were able to hold their own against a whole range of
enemies who, on paper, were far more powerful. The Fida'i had many different
ways of eliminating their targets. Often the attacks would be carried out in public
- assassinating an important figure in front of a large audience ensured maximum political and
psychological impact. The assassins typically used daggers for the same reason - the bloodier
and more visceral the spectacle the better. For the most important - and
therefore well-protected - targets, a Fida'i might spend months, even *years*
getting close, perhaps getting a job in the enemy household or infiltrating their guard
detail. For less high profile individuals, the Fida'i would disguise themselves as
beggars or mystics, hiding in plain sight as their unwitting mark walked right up to
them before striking at the very last second. Not all their attacks were made in
public, though. According to one story, when legendary Kurdish general Saladin
besieged an Assassin stronghold in 1176, he awoke one night in his tent to see a shadowy
figure disappearing out the exit. At first he thought it was one of his guards... until
he noticed the poisoned dagger that had been left underneath his pillow. The implication was
pretty clear - bugger off or next time we’ll stick it in your heart. Needless to say the siege
was lifted the very next day, and the assassins went on to form a loose alliance with Saladin
against Christian crusaders in the Holy Land. Along with their skill, the Assassins were
also known for their incredible bravery. Many of their assassinations - especially
those of the public, up-close-and-personal variety - were pretty much guaranteed to be
suicide missions, but the Fida'i never wavered. In fact, there are reports that, once their
task was carried out, they wouldn't even try to defend themselves, and would simply
wait for the enemy guards to cut them down. According to some, that bravery came
from the use of the drug hashish, taken so that the Assassins could achieve
trance-like focus during a mission. Oddly enough, that alleged drug use is actually the reason
we now have the word 'assassin,' which is an anglicised corruption of the Arabic word
'Hashishin,' meaning 'hashish user.' The Assassins’ enemies used the word as an insult
- they were basically calling them crackheads. Some historical sources - including Venetian
explorer Marco Polo - took the idea of the assassins as drug users one step further,
suggesting opium was an important part of a brain washing initiation ritual used to
inspire absolute obedience among new recruits. According to the story, wannabe assassins
were dosed up with opium before being taken to a beautiful walled garden inside the fortress
of Alamut. This garden was what you might call MTV cribs-worthy, with milk, honey, and
wine flowing about the place in streams, and scantily clad women singing, dancing, and,
well, you can imagine the rest. The recruits would wake the next day after the night of their lives
thinking they'd experienced a vision of paradise. Since the assassins believed this garden of sex,
drugs, and rock and roll was where they'd end up when they died, they were more than willing
to lay down their lives at the drop of a hat. There are even stories of Nizari assassins
proving their unwavering obedience by leaping to their deaths from high places on the orders
of their superiors - apparently that's where the makers of Assassin's Creed got the idea for the
signature 'leap of faith' found in the games. The thing is, it turns out there’s no real
evidence that the Assassins used hashish or other drugs either for brainwashing or
for bravery. These stories might be true, but they also might be little more than propaganda
designed to damage the reputation of the Nizari. That would make sense, since a lot of what we
know about the Assassins comes from contemporary sources who either viewed them as enemies,
or, in the case of people like Marco Polo, as simply mysterious and strange. The Venetian
was one of several westerners who popularised the idea of Hassan-i Sabbah as the Old Man
of the Mountain, a moniker that hints at the almost mythical lens through which many people
viewed the assassins even in their own time. But while it can be difficult to know where
to draw the line between legend and reality, everybody agrees that the Assassin's methods
were very real, and incredibly effective. Hassan forged his followers into an invisible
menace whose shadow loomed large over the Middle East for almost 200 years. They became
so feared that it was common for their enemies to wear chainmail under their clothes and
surrounded themselves with guards day and night. Not that it helped all that much. When the
Assassin's set their sights on someone, more often than not they were as good as dead. In Hassan’s time alone the Order of Assassins
are thought to have killed 50 high profile enemy targets, and under the
stewardship of the men who took on the mantle of the Old Man of
the Mountain after Hassan' death, the number is upwards of 200, with many of
those men being world leaders of their day. The numbers are pretty frightening, but
their effect allowed the Assassins and their Nizari state not only to survive, but to thrive,
spreading out across Persia and eventually Syria, despite being hugely outgunned in almost
every department by their many enemies. But all good - well, murdery - things must
come to an end. And for the Order of Assassins, that end came fairly abruptly with the arrival of
a Mongol horde that rampaged across Western Asia in the mid 13th century. In the Mongols, the
Nizari State had come up against an enemy that was simply too big and
too powerful to be intimated. The Nizaris held more than 50 castles by this
point, most of them mountain fortresses, but after some early losses and the capture of their leader,
every single one of them was forced to surrender. Alamut Castle was among the last to do so in
1256, and with that the Nizari State was all but finished, though Nizari political influence
remained in the region for centuries afterwards. And they never went away entirely - the Nizaris
are still going strong today. Numbering some 15 million followers, they make up the largest
branch of Ismaili Muslims and can be found in more than 25 countries around the world.
Needless to say things have changed a bit - a lot - since the days of the Assassins, but the
legacy of those more brutal times lives on. They may have ceased to exist
close to a millennium ago, but the Order of Assassins continue to have a
remarkable impact on popular culture, and many of the methods they pioneered are still just as
relevant today as they were a thousand years ago. Thanks for watching.
