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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

13. From Hashish to Hashashin to Assassins

hasan sabbah — Hasan Sabbah, depicted here, was a prominent leader and founder of the Nizari Ismailis, a faction of Shiite Muslims in the ancient Middle East. Shutterstock

The Assassins were fanatically loyal to their leader, the Old Man of the Mountain. On one occasion, to impress a visitor with his followers’ dedication, he ordered some of them to jump to their deaths from a castle wall, and others to fatally stab themselves. They instantly obeyed. Such dedication was the end of result of one of history’s most innovative recruitment and indoctrination strategies, whose end result was Assassins convinced that their Sheik held the keys to paradise. Potential recruits were summoned to an Assassin fortress, where they were housed in bare cells, and received daily religious lectures and education. Gradually, it was hinted that Sheik Hassan al Sabah or his successors held the keys to paradise. One day, the more promising young men would be drugged and plied with hashish, which earned the group the Arabic name “Hashashin” – rendered into “Assassins” by Europeans.

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.