Imagine an ultra-secret organization of hitmen steeped in religious fanaticism, so feared that merely by leaving one of their daggers on the pillow of a sleeping king as a warning, by the next day they could bend his will completely and make that king, scared out of his wits, do everything they commanded. A dangerous sect of Shia Muslims (the kind who, even today, always dress in black), whose members were so devoted to their leader and so high on hashish that they threw themselves at death without blinking in order to carry out a mission. We are talking about the Assassins, the Hashshashin, the order founded in the year 1090 AD by Hassan-i Sabbah, the legendary "Old Man of the Mountain," who for almost two centuries sowed terror among all the powerful of the Near East, whether they were Muslim leaders or Christian crusaders. In one of my four books about the crusades, The Dawn of the Templars, I put forward the hypothesis —to me a fairly reasonable one— of how the first Christian king of Jerusalem, Godfrey of Bouillon, and his cousin, Count Warner of Grez, may have been poisoned by one of these hitmen during an official luncheon hosted by the emir of Tripoli, in Lebanon.
It is a fact that after returning from that diplomatic trip to the emirate of Tripoli, both Frankish nobles began to feel ill, and soon died. The king died first and then his cousin who, fortunately, barely had time to send an urgent summons to Jerusalem for Godfrey's brother, Baldwin of Boulogne, at that moment lord of the County of Edessa, so that he would rush to seize power in the holy city before another dangerous claimant turned up at the gate, such as the rival count Raymond of Saint-Gilles. Come with me to discover one of the most fascinating and fearsome organizations in history.
A secret branch of Islam
The Assassins were a sect belonging to a minority branch of Shia Islam, the Nizari Ismailis. They emerged at the end of the 11th century, in a time of great fragmentation and conflict in the Islamic world. Their founder, a brilliant and charismatic man —though certainly also cruel and bloodthirsty— named Hassan-i Sabbah, understood something ingenious: a small group, with no army and no extensive territory, could not openly confront the great empires that surrounded it. But it could make itself feared in another, far more subtle, insidious and terrible way.
Hassan-i Sabbah's strategy was in a way revolutionary: instead of armies, he would use the selective assassination of key enemy figures. Why fight an entire army, when to sow chaos and defeat it was enough to eliminate the general or the prince who commanded it? This tactic of eliminating specific leaders to achieve political objectives, sowing terror among the powerful, made the Assassins enormously influential despite their small numbers. For everyone feared them —both the Muslim leaders, emirs and sultans, and the Christian princes and kings.
Fortresses built at the top of the world
To survive surrounded by far more powerful enemies, the Assassins entrenched themselves in a network of castles and fortresses built in practically inaccessible places, almost always atop the highest and steepest mountains. The most famous of these fortresses was Alamut, in the mountains of the Elburz massif, in northern Persia —an eagle's nest (that is precisely what its name means), almost impossible to conquer, perched on a dizzying crag at an altitude of 2,163 metres.
From these impregnable fortresses, the sect's leader (whom the crusader sources called "the Old Man of the Mountain") directed the operations of his agents, who infiltrated the courts and cities of their enemies. The fortresses were at once refuge, centre of power and symbol: however much a king or a sultan wished to be rid of them, reaching them on their summits was almost impossible, and the narrow, steep paths that led up to them were perfect terrain for setting deadly traps and ambushes for any army that tried to climb. That is, if those hypothetical soldiers were not killed first by the tremendous cold that reigns up there for almost the whole year…
Agents of death who did not fear death
What made the Assassins truly terrifying was the absolute devotion of their agents. These men, called fida'in ("those who sacrifice themselves"), were willing to die to fulfil their mission in the name of almighty Allah, the prophet Muhammad or their spiritual leader. But wait a moment —why the hell does all this sound so familiar? Ah yes: because nowadays, a thousand-odd years later, the Islamic radicals of ISIS, Al-Qaeda, the Balsamic State of Modena 🙂 or Boko Haram do exactly the same thing.
The sect's modus operandi was as follows: they would patiently infiltrate, sometimes for years, posing as blacksmiths, humble shepherds, cooks, greengrocers or waiters, thereby gaining the trust of their victim and of his closest circle (some even went so far as to marry and start families with children to reinforce their cover), until the moment came to act. And when they did, they struck as circumstances dictated, in the most shocking, visible and noisy way possible —with fire, daggers and swords— or in the most absolute silence with powerful poisons.
Although, as a rule, the Assassin killers usually murdered their victims with a dagger in public and in broad daylight —for example, in a crowded mosque or church, a market or in the middle of a court— making sure everyone saw it and got the message. And the message was clear: no one, none of you, however powerful, is safe, anywhere. And since their killers did not even expect to escape the scene of the crime or get out of it alive, they did not fear death and were almost impossible to stop. This combination of fanaticism, patience and contempt for their own lives turned them into the nightmare of every powerful figure in the region.
The legend of paradise (and the origin of the name)
About the reason for that total devotion, a most famous legend arose, later recorded by the celebrated Venetian traveller Marco Polo when he passed through there on his journey to China, among others. According to this story, the Old Man of the Mountain is said to have drugged his young followers up to the eyeballs with hashish and opium —very powerful drugs, especially the latter, and very common in that part of the world— and to have brought them, while they were still half asleep from the high, into a secret, paradisiacal garden full of delicacies, fountains, gardens, luxury galore and beautiful half-naked women (the so-called houris), making them believe that this was the paradise that awaited them if they obeyed. Then he would take them out of there and tell them that they would only return to that paradise if they died carrying out his orders. Thus he secured their blind obedience and their contempt for death. Just like today, really.
From that legend comes, supposedly, the name. It is said that the word "Hashshashin" would derive from "hashish," one of the drugs they were allegedly supplied with. From "Hashshashin" it passed, through the crusaders who carried the term to Europe, into "assassin" in French and English and "asesino-assassino" in Spanish and Italian. Although the exact origin of the word is still debated by linguists, the fact is that our word for the one who kills to order is born, precisely, from the name of this sect. Not a bad linguistic legacy.
The terror of crusaders and sultans (and their end)
The Assassins did not distinguish between religions when choosing their targets: they killed numerous Muslim princes and dignitaries (their rivals within Islam itself) but also prominent crusader figures. One of their most famous victims was the Italian marquis Conrad of Montferrat, newly elected king of Jerusalem and stabbed in the middle of the street in Tyre, in present-day Lebanon, in 1192. Even the great sultan Saladin suffered several attempts by the Assassins and, so the story goes, after finding a dagger and a threatening note beside his bed, he preferred to negotiate a deal with them and pay them a certain amount of gold rather than keep facing such an invisible, omnipresent and unreachable enemy.
The end of the Assassins came in the 13th century, and not at the hands of the crusaders or the local sultans or emirs, but of a new, unstoppable force, far crueller than they were, that swept over the whole East: the Mongols. The murderous Mongol hordes of Genghis Khan, Ögödei Khan, Güyük Khan and Hulagu Khan, who did not bother with subtleties, conquered and razed one by one all the fortresses of the Assassins, including the legendary fortress of Alamut, around 1256.
The terrible sect that had terrorized kings and the powerful for a century and a half was practically exterminated by Asian invaders even more ferocious and ruthless than they were.
The Assassins remained forever in the collective imagination as the archetype of the lethal secret society: the fortresses in the mountains, the fanatical agents, the venerable and mysterious leader, the strike impossible to foresee. Their legend has inspired novels, films and even hugely famous video games such as the celebrated Assassin's Creed «The Ezio Collection» that I love so much.
And all this, dear readers, began with a handful of men perched on some mountains in Persia who discovered that fear, well administered, can be more powerful than any army. If it has fascinated you, you will find the turbulent world of the Crusades in full in my saga The History of the Eight Crusades. History with a capital H, as you were never told it before.
Per Aspera, Ad Astra.
✠ David S. Matrecano
Ibiza, May 2026
Sources and references
- Chronicles and sources: crusader accounts of the "Old Man of the Mountain"; Marco Polo (who recorded the paradise-garden legend, considered legendary); Ali ibn al-Athir; Juvayni (the Persian historian who described the fall of Alamut to the Mongols).
- Context: Nizari Ismaili sect, Hassan-i Sabbah, the fortress of Alamut, the fida'i, the assassination of Conrad of Montferrat (1192), the destruction of the sect by the Mongols (Alamut, c. 1256). Disputed etymology of "assassin."
There is NO fiction in this article
The facts —the existence of the Nizari Ismaili sect of the Assassins, its founder Hassan-i Sabbah, the strategy of selective assassination, the mountain fortresses such as Alamut, the fida'in agents, the assassination of Conrad of Montferrat and the destruction of the sect by the Mongols around 1256— are documented historical facts. The article explicitly notes that the legend of the paradise-garden with naked women (recorded by Marco Polo in his book), as well as the origin of the sect's name from hashish, are legendary matter (however likely it may be), still much debated by the historical community, and not facts proven 100%. The narrator's comments and observations are part of the personal literary and artistic voice of the author of this article and of the books mentioned in it, David S. Matrecano.