Terrifying Terrorists of the Ancient World and Medieval Era

17. History’s First Terrorist Group

The Sicarii were a militant faction of the Zealots, a first century AD Judean political movement that sought to spark a rebellion in order to free the Holy Lands from Roman rule. The result was the Jewish Revolt of 66 to 73 AD, whose course and consequences were terrible to all involved. While the Zealots were radical, their Sicarii splinter went to extremes that made them history’s earliest identifiable terrorists, with methods that meet modern definitions of the term. The Sicarii, meaning “dagger men” in Latin, earned their name from the knives known as sicae that they used to kill their victims. Their goal was to cleanse the Holy Lands of Romans and their Jewish collaborators, and their standard tactic was to blend into crowds at public gatherings, then strike suddenly.

16. Terrorists Deliberately Provoking the Authorities Has a Long History

Concealed in crowds, Sicarii would wait for an opportune moment. When it presented itself, they would suddenly charge their target, stab him, and escape in the resultant confusion and panic by blending back into the crowd. They focused their wrath on the pro-Roman Jewish aristocracy, whom they marked down for death. Their prominent victims included a High Priest of the Jewish Temple, after whose killing the Sicarii went on an assassination spree that terrorized Judea’s Jewish and Roman elites. They also burned their targets’ estates, and eventually began to kidnap and take them hostage for ransom. Their victims, particularly imperial officials, were targeted in a deliberate attempt to provoke the Romans. The Romans, who needed little provocation, responded with terrible massacres and collective punishment of the Hebrew population.

15. Goading the Authorities to Overreact…

The heavy-handed Roman response kept the embers of discontent smoldering. It also lit new flames of resentment, and provided a steady and steadily growing stream of new recruits and sympathizers from the families and friends of the Romans’ victims. The ancient Sicarii adopted a strategy common among modern terrorists, and engaged in sabotage to worsen the populace’s living conditions and keep them disgruntled. Faced with an occupier ready to resort to indiscriminate violence, the Sicarii committed atrocities that guaranteed massive Roman retaliation. By provoking the Romans into massive and indiscriminate retaliation, the Sicarii forced many Jewish fence sitters to pick from terrible choices. They could do nothing, and probably end up massacred or enslaved by angry Romans in no mood to distinguish “good” Jews from bad. Or they could join the resistance and hope to gain freedom, or at least the dignity of dying while fighting.

14. … and Forcing the Public to Choose

The Sicarii strategy to force people to choose was evident in the run up to the Jewish Revolt. It began in 66 AD, when the Roman governor responded to tax protests by arresting prominent Jews and looting Jerusalem’s Temple. The protests escalated into a full-blown revolt that forced the Romans and their puppet king to flee Judea. While that was going on, the Sicarii attacked and seized the fortress of Masada near the Dead Sea. They then fell upon nearby Roman enclaves, and slaughtered over 700 Romans, most of them women and children. That ensured that there could be no turning back, and thus solidified the Sicarii ranks. It also confronted other Judeans with the prospect of massive retaliation and collective punishment of the innocent and guilty alike if the Romans won.

13. An Ancient Terrorist Rampage in the Holy Lands

After they seized the Masada fortress and slaughtered hundreds of Romans, the Sicarii joined the Zealots and other rebels to attack and capture Jerusalem in 66 AD. Once in control of the city, the Sicarii went on a terrible rampage. They began by killing known and suspected collaborators en masse. Next, they turned on all opponents, then suspected opponents, and finally, even those who failed to express sufficient enthusiasm for the Sicarii cause. Such extremism led to a backlash and an uprising by the city’s population, and a falling out with the other rebels. It culminated in Sicarii defeat, the capture, torture, and execution of their leader, and the group’s expulsion from Jerusalem.

12. The Terrorists Who Chose Death Over Surrender

Chased out of Jerusalem, the surviving Sicarii retreated to the fortress of Masada, and contented themselves with plundering the surrounding countryside. In the meantime, the Zealots and other radicals managed to crush a popular backlash, and retained control of Jerusalem until it was besieged, conquered, and razed by the Romans in 70 AD. The Romans then began mopping up operations, and eventually reached the final holdouts, the Sicarii in Masada, whom they besieged. Realizing that all was lost and that their fate would be terrible if they were captured, the Sicarii committed mass suicide, killing their families and then themselves.

11. The First Muslim Terrorists

Long before the horrific depredations of Al Qaeda and ISIS, there were the even more horrific Kharijites, or Khawarij, whose name means “Outsiders” in Arabic. Centuries before Osama bin Laden, the Kharijites were a radical fundamentalist faction of early Islamic dissenters who appeared on the scene the Prophet Muhammad’s death. They came up with the concept of Takfir, whereby Muslims who disagreed with them were deemed to no longer be fellow Muslims, but apostates and kafirs (infidels). That gave them license to get around the Islamic prohibition against killing other Muslims. As such, the Kharijites established the philosophical foundations for modern terrorists such as the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and ISIS. They emerged amidst a succession dispute between those who believed that leadership after Muhammad’s demise should be confined to the Prophet’s family and bloodline, and those who thought it should be open to whomever the Muslim community chose.

10. The Roots of Islam’s Sunni-Shiite Split Gave Rise to Terrorism

A Muslim minority believed that leadership should be confined to the Prophet’s family. They coalesced around Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law Ali ibn Abi Talib, and became known as Shiites, or faction, of Ali. A majority believed that leadership should not be restricted to the Prophet’s family, and became known as Sunnis. The first three Caliphs, or successors of the Prophet, were elected by Muslims who bypassed Muhammad’s kinsman Ali each time. On the fourth try, after the murder of the third Caliph, Ali was finally elected as the Prophet’s successor. However, the third Caliph’s relatives alleged that Ali was implicated in the murder, and engineered the election of a rival Caliph, Muawiya, with a base in Damascus, Syria. The rivals went to war, but at the Battle of Siffin, in 657, Ali was prevailed upon to cease fighting, even though his forces were winning, and settle the issue through arbitration.

9. From Supporters of the Caliph to Sworn Enemies

The Kharijites had supported Ali in his war against Muawaiya, but turned against him when he accepted arbitration. They viewed the Caliphate as the collective property of the Muslim community, not the private property of Ali. The Kharijites contended that Ali lacked the authority to make a decision about who gets to be Caliph. Election by the Muslim community was the sole legitimate process to bestow the Caliphate upon somebody, they argued, and the Muslim community had elected Ali. When Ali accepted arbitration to decide who would be Caliph, the Kharijites reasoned, he had overstepped his boundaries and usurped a power of decision that was not his to make. Ali ignored Kharijite objections, and went ahead with the arbitration. In hindsight, he probably regretted it. The arbitration turned into a fiasco, and neither settled the succession dispute nor produced a result other than to weaken Ali politically.

8. Going on the Warpath

The Kharijites soured on Ali, whom they now viewed as much of a usurper as his rival. So they decided to get rid of both, and plotted to assassinate the rival caliphs on the same day during Friday prayers. The assassins who went after Ali succeeded and got their man in 661. However, those who went after his rival Caliph Muawiya only managed to wound him. Muawiya survived, emerged as sole Caliph, and went on to establish the Umayyad Caliphate, a hereditary monarchy in all but name. The Kharijites rose in rebellion against Muawiya, now Islam’s sole ruler thanks to a helping hand from the botched Kharijite plot that had killed his rival but left him alive. In their struggle against the first Umayyad Caliph, Muawiya I, the Kharijites contended that he was illegitimate because he gained the Caliphate by force of arms, rather than election by the Muslim community.

7. A Turn to Radical Puritanism

In the protracted fight the Umayyad Caliph, the Kharijites earned a reputation among contemporary Muslims as horrific radicals. On the one hand, they adopted and stuck to democratic and egalitarian principles, whereby governance was to be entrusted to Caliphs elected by and responsible to the Muslim community. Commendable as those principles might have been, they were more than counterbalanced by viciousness and fierce fanaticism that turned off many. The Kharijites contended that Muslims who backslid or sinned, such as those who drank alcohol, fornicated, missed the daily prayers, failed to fast on Ramadan, or even engaged in idle gossip, had engaged in behavior that rendered them apostates. That made them worthy of death. The Kharijites launched a terror campaign against the Caliph’s supporters, as well as those who failed to meet their purity standards.

6. Putting the “Terror” in Terrorism

As their struggle with the Umayyad Caliphate and perceived sinners intensified, the Kharijites’ viciousness grew apace. Eventually, they came to view even neutral Muslims as enemies. As they saw it, their failure to support the Kharijites despite the glaringly obvious righteousness of their position, proved their apostasy. That rendered them kafirs, and not fellow Muslims whose blood the Kharijites were prohibited from shedding. Captives were tortured and mutilated, horrific atrocities too gruesome to describe in detail abounded, and entire villages and towns were massacred.

5. Islam’s First Vicious Anarchists

The most extreme Kharijite faction, the Azariqah in southern Iraq, separated themselves from the entire Muslim community and declared death to all sinners – defined as all who did not share the Azariqah’s puritanical beliefs – and their families. Their rebellion was eventually crushed, but embers remained. The Kharijites became the anarchists of Islam’s first centuries, an ever present irritant and horrific menace. They rejected the Caliphate’s authority, and pursued a campaign of terror and assassinations, combined with a low level insurgency in backcountry regions, that flared up every generation or two into a major rebellion that required considerable expense and effort to beat down.

4. The Teenage Poet Who Turned Prophet

Abu al Tayib Ahmad ibn Hussayn, better known as Al Mutanabbi (915 – 965), is the most influential and prominent Arabic language poet. His verse is widespread and proverbial throughout the Arab world. His work was mostly odes to patrons, but he was an egomaniac who managed to turn a significant portion of his panegyrics into odes to himself, his talent, and his courage. However, he crafted verse with such consummate skill and artistry that he is commonly deemed to have attained a pinnacle unequaled in the Arabic language before or since. Al Mutanabbi exhibited a precocious poetic talent that won him a scholarship and free education. When he was a child, the Qarmatians, a heretical cult that began to pillage the Middle East, and he joined them in his teens. At age seventeen, Al Mutanabbi claimed to be a Nabi, or prophet, and led a Qarmatian revolt in Syria.

3. A Radical Sect in Eastern Arabia

Al Mutanabbi’s rebellion was suppressed, and he was captured and imprisoned until he recanted two years later. The Nabi claim earned him the derisory nickname Al Mutanabbi, or “would-be prophet”, by which he is known to history. As to the sect on whose behalf he led a revolt, the Qarmatians combined elements of Zoroastrianism with Shiite Islam. They formed a radical sect that was deemed heretical by other Muslims. They started off as bandits who earned a living attacking trade and pilgrimage caravans, but became religious after they came under the sway of a Persian mystic, Abu Sa’id Al Jannabi. Their leader transformed the bandits into a millenarian cult that preached the End of Days was near, and gathered a large following of fanatics. The Qarmatians rose in the ninth century and captured eastern Arabia and Bahrain, where they founded a utopian religious republic in 899.

2. The Muslim Terrorists Who Destroyed Islam’s Holiest Sites

From their base in eastern Arabia and Bahrain, the Qarmatians terrorized the Middle East for generations. They pillaged their neighbors, engaged in widespread banditry, massacred pilgrims by the tens of thousands, and seized and sacked Mecca. The Qarmatians believed that pilgrimage to Mecca was a superstition, so they sent raiding parties to interdict the pilgrimage routes. In one such raid in 906, they massacred over 20,000 pilgrims. In 930, as part of a millenarian quest to speed up and usher in the End of Days, the Qarmatians seized Mecca and Medina, Islam’s holiest cities, and sacked both. When they sacked Mecca, the Qarmatians slaughtered over 30,000 pilgrims, desecrated religious sites, and ritually and literally polluted the holy Well of Zamzam by stuffing it full with their victims’ corpses. They also seized the Black Stone, a meteorite rock affixed to the Kaaba and deemed holy by Muslims.

1.     Holding Islam’s Holiest Artifact for Ransom

The Qarmatians took the Black Stone back to their republic, and smashed it to pieces. Cementing their awful reputation in Muslim eyes, they held the stone’s shards for a huge ransom. It was paid by the Abbasid Caliphate, who reassembled the bits and restored them to the Kaaba. Pilgrimage ceased for nearly a decade. It only resumed after the Qarmatians were paid protection money by the region’s states, the Abbasid and Fatimid Caliphates, to refrain from attacking the holy cities. The tribute payments continued until a defeat in 976 to the Abbasids sent the Qarmatians’ fortunes into a decline. Their radicalism waned along with their power, and by 1058 they had abandoned the beliefs deemed heretical by mainstream Muslims and reverted to orthodox Islam. A decade later, the Seljuk Turks inflicted a decisive and final defeat upon the Qarmatians, and brought their republic to an end.

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Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources and Further Reading

Ayoub, Mahmoud – The Crisis of Muslim History: Religion and Politics in Early Islam (2005)

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace – The Kingdom and the Caliphate: Duel of the Islamic States

Crone, Patricia – God’s Rule: Government and Islam (2004)

Daftary, Farhad – Medieval Isma’ili History and Thought (2001)

Encyclopedia Britannica – Al Mutanabbi

Encyclopedia Britannica – Kharijite

Encyclopedia Britannica – Sicarii

Encyclopedia Iranica – Abu Said Jannabi

History Collection – Assassins: The Medieval Murder Cult that Terrorized the Middle East

Inside Arabia – Al Mutanabbi and the Arrogance Within

Josephus – The Wars of the Jews

Madelung, Wilferd – The Succession to Muhammad: A Study of the Early Caliphate (1997)

Past & Present Society No. 167 (May, 2000) – Ninth-Century Muslim Anarchists

Smallwood, Edith Mary – The Jews Under Roman Rule: From Pompey to Diocletian (1976)