A CRIMINAL HISTORY OF MANKIND

Millions who told preposterous lies. It was many centuries before scholars recognised that Marco
Polo was a painstakingly truthful man.
One of Marco’s least credible stories concerned a sinister being called the Old Man of the
Mountain. This old man, whose name was Aloadin, lived in Persia, and was regarded by his people
as a prophet. He inhabited a fortress at the head of a valley, and was rich enough to turn the valley
into an enormous and beautiful garden, full of pavilions and palaces, trees bearing every kind of
fruit and brooks flowing with wine and milk as well as water. The pavilions were inhabited by
beautiful dancing girls. It was, in fact, a very passable imitation of the paradise promised by the
prophet Mahomet.
When the Old Man wanted somebody killed - Marco Polo does not explain why - he would order
one of his followers to carry out the assassination, promising that his reward would be an eternity in
paradise. And the man would unhesitatingly sacrifice his life to carry out the order; for he was
convinced that he had already tasted paradise. The cunning old man had all his trainee assassins
drugged and carried into the garden; when they woke up they found themselves surrounded by
beautiful girls, who plied them with food and wine and offered their favours. After a few days, the
young man was drugged and carried back to the castle. He would now be impatient to sacrifice his
life to regain paradise...
The would-be killers, says Polo, are called ‘Ashishin’, and that word provides the clue to the real
identity of Aloadin, the Old Man of the Mountain. The castle really existed; it was called Alamut,
meaning Eagle’s Nest, and is perched on a rock in the Elburz Mountains of Iran. There was
probably some form of landscaped garden below the castle, in the valley, for a narrow slit in the
rock of Alamut leads to a green enclosure with a spring. The Old Man of the Mountain was called
Hasan bin Sabah, and it was through him that the word ‘assassin’ entered the European vocabulary.
It is derived from ‘hashishim’, for it was also widely believed that his followers nerved themselves
to kill - and be killed - by smoking hashish.
Hasan bin Sabah was born about the year 1030, in the town of Rayy, near modern Teheran; his
family were Shi’ite Muslims - that is, Muslims who believed that the prophet’s cousin Ali should
have become the first Caliph instead of Abu Bekr. Hasan was deeply interested in religion, and
became involved with a sect called the Ismailis who had broken away from the Shi’ites.
We have seen that the Abbasids - who were orthodox Muslims -had gained power by promising to
support a Shi’ite Caliph, then failed to redeem the promise. By the year 1000, the Shi’a and the
Sunnites - orthodox Muslims - were no longer so bitterly opposed. The real opposition came from
the Ismailis, who had set up their own rival dynasty, the Fatimids, with its own Caliph. (Fatima, the
prophet’s daughter, had been killed in the massacre of Shi’ites in 680 A.D.; but a sick boy named
Ali ibn Husayn had survived to carry on the line). By the time of Hasan bin Sabah’s birth, it looked
as if the Ismailis were going to be the winners in the Islamic power struggle - but this was before
the Seljuk Turks appeared on the scene and lent their support to the Abbasids.
Hasan seems to have been a late developer. He was in his thirties when a serious illness made him
decide to become an Ismaili; he took the oath of allegiance in 1072. Four years later, he had to
leave his home town - no doubt for preaching Ismaili doctrines - and made his way to the newlybuilt
Ismaili capital, Cairo. There he became a supporter of the Caliph’s eldest son - and
presumptive heir - Nizar. Political - and/or religious - intrigues led to his expulsion from the capital.
One biography says that he was sentenced to death, but that just before his execution one of the
towers of the city collapsed; it was seen as an omen and he was exiled instead. The ship on which