Fake Faith, Paradise of the Assassins: Alamut
Hassan chose a
small village on a mountain and built his fortress there, that place
was called Alamut. Hassan's fortress was one of the best secured
fortresses in history. He built many barriers and had always had a huge
stock of food. His only problem was water; they used the water of a
stream that could easily be cut and so they engineered their own system
to get water from somewhere else. Not only this, the mere choice of the
location was pure genius, Alamut was over a big mountain that was very
hard to reach. For that reason, no army was ever able to go anywhere
near the Assassins for a many many years.
By that time Hassan's order was already becoming very big and he organized it very well. The idea was to work on two sides, the first was to convert and conquer as much as possible, and the second was to build one of the world's strongest, if not the strongest, killing-machine. They called themselves the Assasyeen, the fundamentalists; those who went back to the fundamentals of the religion, yes same idea of the name of the Salafis. From Assasyeen, and not Hashasheen, came the term Assassins. Their hierarchy was as follows:
By that time Hassan's order was already becoming very big and he organized it very well. The idea was to work on two sides, the first was to convert and conquer as much as possible, and the second was to build one of the world's strongest, if not the strongest, killing-machine. They called themselves the Assasyeen, the fundamentalists; those who went back to the fundamentals of the religion, yes same idea of the name of the Salafis. From Assasyeen, and not Hashasheen, came the term Assassins. Their hierarchy was as follows:
- Hassan Sabbah, the Grand Master, the Supreme Preacher.
- He was surrounded by his missionaries, or da'is, who also had commissioners who worked on the Eastern and Western Persia and Syria to spread the missionaries everywhere.
- The companions, the rafiks, the cadres of the movement. They lead the organization in cities. The brightest of them would be chosen to be a missionary.
- The attached, the lassek, those are the believers and were all sorts of people who spread everywhere.
- The answerers, the mujibs, these are the disciples. They were first directed to some teachings and then divided between companions, believers or fida'is according to their nature.
- Those who sacrifice themselves, the fida'is. They were chosen from those who had huge reserves of faith (yes, this is the importance of it), skill and endurance, but little tendency to learn. Hassan chose the fidai's himself and would never waste a man who could be a missionary on being a fida'i.
This is utterly false. You are pretty ignorant about your knowledge of history. Read this book to get some authentic knowledge:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.amazon.com/The-Assassin-Legends-Myths-Ismailis/dp/1850439508
If you'd read through the previous post you would have known that this is a different version than the one told by Marco Polo, just like the one in the book. It is based on Amin Maalouf's research to write Samarkand. He used what was left of the Alamut chronicles and diaries. Not one word of this is mine!
ReplyDeleteHistory is already messed up, and that's the general case. You can never know what's authentic and what's not. You just have to use your mind and connect the dots and see which story makes more sense. For me, this version makes a lot of sense, especially when I have seen live examples of fake faith in our own time.
I don't know what your book says, but I trust my source very well. And since there are many stories told, you can never know which one is false and which one is authentic. How do you know that Daftary's version is authentic and not Maalouf's? That's what I have already said, this version seems closer to the truth.