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Murder Holes, Machicolations, and Other Medieval Warfare Facts

Khalid Elhassan March 6, 2020 34 min

Pike and shot - Pike and Shot : Campaigns — A pike and short formation, with pikemen protecting those wielding firearms while they reloaded. Pintrest

24. Exterminating the Assassins Cult

An Assassins cult mountaintop fortress. Daily Sabbah

In 1251, Hulagu was recognized by his brother Mongke as ruler of the Ilkhanate in Persia, and was ordered to extend Mongol power into the Islamic world. As a preliminary, Hulagu attacked and seized the mountain fortresses of the Assassins cult, a militant Islamic sect led by a mystic known as the “Old Man of the Mountain”. The Assassins recruited and brainwashed young men by claiming that they controlled entry to paradise. They got recruits high on hashish, set them loose in a beautiful garden full of gorgeous women, and convinced them they were in heaven. When they came down from the high and woke up, the recruits were back in regular and austere surroundings.

The Assassins convinced the young men that the only path back to heaven was to die while killing for the cult. It proved highly effective. With no shortage of horny young men high on hash and desperate to die while killing the Assassins’ enemies so they could return to paradise, the cult terrorized the Middle East for generations until Hulagu extinguished them.

Read More: Deadliest Assassin Groups in History.

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.