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Assassins: The Medieval Murder Cult That Terrorized the Middle East

Khalid Elhassan January 23, 2025 14 min

Assassins - The Old Man of the Mountain and his followers, as depicted in the TV series 'Al Hashashin' — The Old Man of the Mountain and his followers, as depicted in the TV series 'Al Hashashin'. TMDB

5. Scaring Saladin

The Assassins managed to intimidate Saladin, at the time the most powerful man in the Middle East. History Skills

Another whom the Assassins intimidated was Sultan Saladin, leader of the revived Islamic resistance against the Crusades. After he recaptured Jerusalem from the Crusaders in 1187, Saladin went after the Assassins, who had murdered his predecessor, and sought to end the cult once and for all. However, while encamped near their holdfasts in the mountains of northern Syria, Saladin awoke in his tent one morning to discover that the Assassins had bypassed all his bodyguards and layers of protection. They left a menacing letter pinned to his pillow by a poisoned dagger, advising Saladin that they could kill him whenever and wherever they wanted. Saladin turned his army around, abandoned the campaign, and sent officials to negotiate an understanding with the current Old Man of the Mountain. Via such means, grudging live-and-let-live relationships were developed between the Assassins and the region’s powers.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.