The Hashshashins, Real Life Assasin's Creed

I think most people have at least heard of the Assassin’s Creed series, created and managed by Ubisoft. For those unfamiliar with it, the games follow a shadow war between the Order of Assassins (the “good” side) and the Templars (the “bad” side) across human history. There are also odd plotlines about an ancient civilization and lost artifacts, but that’s not the topic here. In reality, both factions did exist, though they were drastically different from their video-game counterparts. The Order of Assassins, or Hashshashins, was a militant sect defending the Nizari Ismaili Muslims from their enemies, who were mostly other Muslims. They almost never came to blows with the Knights Templar, who didn’t care much about world domination, even if neither side particularly liked the other.

 

Although the Hashshashin sect began in the late 11th century when Hassan-i Sabbah founded the order, its origins go further back. Everything started with the death of the Prophet Muhammad, which created a schism among his followers over who should succeed him. Long story short: most Muslims proclaimed Abu Bakr al-Siddiq as Muhammad’s successor and formed the Sunni majority, while a much smaller group, the Shia, claimed Ali ibn Abi Talib was the rightful heir. An even smaller faction, the Nizari Ismailis, would come to rise from the Sunni some centuries later, founded by Hassan himself. After Hassan and his loyalists fled Cairo for supporting Nizar as the new Fatimid Caliph. For some time they searched for a new home and traveled to the mountains south of the Caspian Sea until they found the fortified site called Alamut. The Nizari captured Alamut and the surrounding area after a two-year campaign, repurposing existing sites for better defense and livability and constructing new strongholds such as Lamasar.

  

Hassan’s work did not end there, as his people had numerous enemies—most notably Sunni and other Shia Muslims, who regarded the Nizaris as heretics. Knowing his followers were too few for conventional warfare, Hassan turned to new means of fighting. Thus the Hashshashins were born not as a field army but as agents operating in the shadows, using daggers and other melee weapons to slay their enemies’ leaders. Ranged weapons and poisons were frowned upon by these agents, whom they considered tools of the weak—ironically, since both readily come to mind when one thinks of assassins.

 

As mentioned earlier, the Hashshashins rarely fought Christians because their territories were far from the Crusader states, even though the two sides distrusted each other. Instead, most of their actions targeted other Muslims—both Shia and Sunni. Many caliphs, sultans, generals, and religious figures were slain for threatening, or merely appearing to threaten, the Nizari Ismailis. Even Salah ad-Din (Saladin) faced trouble from the agents of Alamut, surviving two assassination attempts during his campaigns.

 

Their organization came to an end when they encountered the expanding Mongol Empire. Relations began on friendly terms because of their shared dislike of the Khwarazmian state—if you’ve read my series on Genghis Khan, you know how things ended for the later. In paranoia, however, the Nizari attempted to intimidate the Mongols by trying to assassinate Hülegü and Möngke Khan, grandsons of Genghis Khan. All they achieved was showing they had missed the memo “don’t make it personal with Genghis Khan”; they were swiftly annihilated. Their once seemingly impenetrable strongholds fell one by one to the warriors of the steppes, who were unshaken by the Hashshashin reputation and well accustomed to their favoured tactics, bringing an end to the assassin sect. The Nizari Ismailis at least managed to survive the encounter and are still active up to this day.

 

And as far as we know, there are no mentions of ancient artifacts from a long-lost technologically advanced civilization.

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