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History’s Out of the Ordinary Radicals

Khalid Elhassan June 29, 2020 33 min

Lebensborn - Schutzstaffel — Kidnapping of Polish children for the Lebensborn association. Wikimedia

4. Scaring Saladin

Those intimidated by the Assassins’ cult include Saladin, who recaptured Jerusalem from the Crusaders in 1187. Saladin marched on 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, he 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.

The ruins of the Assassins’ chief fortress, Alamut, atop the steep rise at the center of the photo – note the rugged surrounding terrain. Wikimedia

Saladin turned his army around, abandoned the campaign, and sent emissaries to negotiate an understanding with the current Old Man of the Mountain. Via such means, a grudging live-and-let-live relationship developed between the Assassins and the region’s powers. It lasted for generations until the Mongols, led by Genghis Khan’s grandson Hulagu, wiped out the Assassins. Hulagu stormed their mountain fortresses, massacred the cultists, and sent the last Old Man of the Mountain in chains to the Grand Khan in Mongolia, who had him executed.

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.