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Horrific Facts from History that Will Invade Nightmares

Khalid Elhassan October 31, 2021 35 min

Hulagu and a cowering Caliph after the fall of Baghdad. Deadliest Blogger

Grandson of the great Mongol conqueror Genghis Khan. Wikimedia.

18. A Horrific Cult That Was Extinguished by an Even More Horrific Conqueror

As a preliminary, Hulagu attacked and seized the mountain fortresses of the Order of Assassins, a militant Islamic cult led by a series of mystics, each known as the “Old Man of the Mountain”. The Assassins recruited and brainwashed young men with flimflam that convinced them that their leader controlled the keys to paradise. They got recruits high on hashish, and set them loose in beautiful gardens full of gorgeous women. When they came down from the high and woke up, they were back in regular and austere surroundings.

The recruits were told that they had been in been in paradise and that the only way to return was to die while killing for the Old Man of the Mountain. It proved highly effective. The Order of Assassins, with no shortage of randy young men high on hash and desperate to get back to paradise, terrorized the Middle East for generations. The Assassins’ horrific depredations ended when the even more horrific Hulagu showed up with a Mongol army, overran their mountain fortresses, captured their leader, and sent him back to Mongolia where he was 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.