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ABSTRACT
For centuries, Marco Polo's legends of the Old Man of the Mountain, his paradise garden, and his assembly of assassins have fascinated readers. Modern scholarship, however, has demonstrated that these are a fanciful history of the Nizari Ismaili Muslims of the state of Alamut. This article analyses the causes and motivations for the persistence of these tales and their trappings. The trope permeates popular culture ranging from medieval fables to the multi-billion dollar Assassin's Creed video game franchise. More surprising, the offensive “assassin” moniker and its associated images are strangely resilient within academia itself, long after Orientalist portrayals of the Muslim world stopped being fashionable. The study also introduces several little-known works, often newly discovered, which emanate from the state centred at Alamut. These allow us a rare glimpse into the community's self-perception. The steady recovery of such long-lost sources sheds new light on the Nizaris, revealing the life of a community that is equally fascinating, if less fantastic, than the “assassins” of Marco Polo's imagination.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Marco Polo and Rustichello da Pisa, The Description of the Worldi, ed. and trans. Arthur Christopher Moule and Paul Pelliot, 2 vols., vol. 1 (London: George Routledge and Sons, 1938), 128. The quotations that follow uncited from this work are all drawn from this translation, pages 128–33, with some minor modifications. The original version of Marco Polo's tales, composed in 1298, is lost. His account survives in at least 135 manuscripts in several languages copied across Europe before 1530. To date, the most thorough study of the manuscript corpus is Consuelo Wager Dutschke, “Francesco Pipino and the Manuscripts of Marco Polo's ‘Travels’” (PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1993). The English translation used here is based on a critical edition, the translation of which incorporates variants from several early manuscript traditions, Polo and Rustichello da Pisa, The Description of the World, vol. 1, 41.
2 The scene is depicted in , drawn by Signor Quinto Cenni from a rough design by Sir Henry Yule, Marco Polo, The Book of Ser Marco Polo the Venetian concerning the Kingdoms and Marvels of the East, ed. and trans. Henry Yule and Cordier Henri, 3rd ed., 2 vols., vol. 2 (London: John Murray, 1903), i, xvi.
3 Mark Cruse, “Marco Polo in Manuscript: The Travels of the Devisement du monde,” Narrative Culture 2, no. 2 (2015): 171.
4 Ibid.
5 Nicolás Wey Gómez, The Tropics of Empire: Why Columbus Sailed South to the Indies (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008), 139–40; Folker Reichert, “Columbus und Marco Polo - Asien in Amerika: Zur Literaturgeschichte der Entdeckungen,” Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung 15, no. 1 (1988): passim.
6 Le Livre des merveilles. Manuscript ark:/12148/btv1b52000858n, Bibliothèque nationale de France. Département des Manuscrits. Français 2810, Paris, 214 recto.
7 Polo and Rustichello da Pisa, The Description of the World, vol. 1, 73.
8 Farhad Daftary's meticulous research has traced the origins of the European Assassin legends and analyzed how they were the result of complex political and cultural forces and structures in the Muslim world, which were ill-understood in the European accounts of the day. This article draws liberally on Daftary's findings in The Assassin Legends: Myths of the Ismailis (London: I.B. Tauris, 1994).
9 In 1809, Silvestre de Sacy (d. 1838) was the first to realize and document the etymology of the name Assassin, presenting his findings to the Institut de France on July 7, 1809, “Mémoire sur la dynastie des Assassins et sur l’origine de leur nom,” Annales des Voyages de la Geographie et de l’Histoire 8, no. 22–24 (July 7 1809). An abridged version of his arguments was published in the Moniteur the same year, “Mémoire sur la dynastie des Assassins et sur l’origine de leur nom,” Moniteur 210 (July 29, 1809), as was a response to a critique of his thesis, ibid. 41. In this regard, see Georges Salmon, ed. Silvestre de Sacy (1758–1838), 2 vols., vol. 1 (Le Caire: Imprimerie de l’Institut français d’archéologie orientale, 1905), lxxiv. The first and third of these were translated into English in notes D and E of Joseph Freiherr von Hammer-Purgstall, Die Geschichte der Assassinen, aus Morgenländischen Quellen, trans. Oswald Charles Wood, The History of the Assassins, derived from Oriental Sources (London: Smith and Elder, Cornhill, 1835); (Originally published, Stuttgart: J.G. Cotta, 1818), 227–35 and 236–40. De Sacy expanded upon his arguments in his “Mémoire sur la dynastie des Assassins,” Mémoirs de l’Institut Royal de France 4 (1818). This expanded version was later translated into English, “Mémoire sur la dynastie des Assassins et sur l’origine de leur nom,” trans. Azizeh Azodi, “Memoir on the Dynasty of the Assassins and on the Etymology of their Name,” in The Assassin Legends: Myths of the Ismaʿilis, ed. Farhad Daftary (London: I.B. Tauris, 1994).
10 Abū Manṣūr ʿAbd al-Qāhir ibn Ṭāhir al-Baghdādī, al-Farq bayna’l-firaq, ed. and trans. Kate Chambers Seelye, Moslem Schisms and Sects: (al-Farḳ bain al-firaḳ) being the history of the various philosophic systems developed in Islam (New York: AMS Press, 1966), part 2, 107–8.
11 Hasan-i Sabbah held the position of “proof” (hujjah) in the Ismaili religious hierarchy. See, for example, Muḥammad ibn ʿUbayd Allāh Abū’l-Maʿālī, Bayān al-adyān: Dar sharḥ-i adyān wa madhāhib-i jāhilī wa Islām, ed. ʿAbbās Iqbāl Āshtiyānī and Muḥammad Taqī Dānish-pazhūh (Tihrān: Intishārāt-i Rūzānah, 1376 HS/1997 CE), 55. For more details on his position and activities, see Shafique N. Virani, “Alamūt, Ismailism and Khwāja Qāsim Tushtarī's Recognizing God,” Shii Studies Review 2, no. 1–2 (2018): 194–7; Farhad Daftary, “Hasan-i Sabbah and the Origins of the Nizari Ismaili Daʿwa and State,” chap. 7, in Ismailis in Medieval Muslim Societies (London: I.B. Tauris in association with Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2005).
12 For details and sources, see Marshall G.S. Hodgson, The Order of Assassins: The Struggle of the Early Nizārī Ismāʿīlīs against the Islamic World (The Hague: Mouton, 1955), 78, 85, 88, chart following p. 89, 93–4, 101, 105, 144–6, 215; Farhad Daftary, The Ismāʿīlīs: Their History and Doctrines, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 329–30, 335–6; Bernard Lewis, The Assassins: A Radical Sect in Islam (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1967), 50, 52, 70; Bogdan Smarandache, “The Franks and the Nizārī Ismāʿīlīs in the Early Crusade Period,” Al-Masaq 24, no. 3 (2012): 227–31.
13 On this dynamic, see Hodgson, Order of Assassins, 111–2; Daftary, Ismāʿīlīs: History and Doctrines, 328–9.
14 ʿIzz al-Dīn Ibn al-Athīr, al-Taʾrīkh al-kāmil (al-Kāmil fī’l-taʾrīkh), 12 vols., vol. 10 (al-Qāhirah: Maṭbaʻat Muḥammad Muṣṭafā, 1303 AH/[1885 CE]), 112.
15 ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn ʿAṭā-Malik Juwaynī, Taʾrīkh-i Jahāngushāy, ed. Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb Qazwīnī, 3 vols., vol. 3 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1912–1937), 269–70; ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn ʿAṭā-Malik Juwaynī, Taʾrīkh-i Jahāngushāy, trans. John Andrew Boyle, The History of the World-Conqueror, 2 vols., vol. 2 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958), 719.
16 Shafique N. Virani, “Persian Poetry, Sufism and Ismailism: The Testimony of Khwājah Qāsim Tushtarī's Recognizing God,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Series 3, 29, no. 1 (January 2019): 24.
17 I am currently finalizing a critical edition and translation of this work. The most thorough study to date is Maryam Muʿizzī (Moezi), “Bāznigarī dar rawābiṭ-i Ismāʿīliyān wa mulūk-i Nīmrūz bar pāyah-yi matnī-yi naw yāftah,” Muṭāliʿāt-i taʾrīkh-i Islām 2, no. 6 (Autumn 1389 HS/[2010 CE]): 103–37.
18 Willem van Ruysbroeck (William of Rubruck), The Journey of William of Rubruck to the Eastern Parts of the World, 1253–55: As Narrated by Himself with Two Accounts of the Earlier Journey of John of Pian de Carpine, ed. and trans. William Woodville Rockhill (London: Hakluyt Society, 1900), 222.
19 Juwaynī, Jahāngushāy, vol. 3, 186–7, 269–70; Juwaynī, World-Conqueror, vol. 2, 666, 719.
20 Juwaynī, Jahāngushāy, vol. 3, 277; Juwaynī, World-Conqueror, vol. 2, 724–5.
21 Bruce Lincoln, “An Early Moment in the Discourse of ‘Terrorism:’ Reflections on a Tale from Marco Polo,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 48, no. 2 (2006): 242.
22 Ibid. 245.
23 Ibid. 253.
24 Richard William Southern, Western Views of Islam in the Middle Ages, 3rd ed. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980); (Originally published, 1962), 28.
25 The Song of Roland, trans. William Stanley Merwin (New York: Modern Library, 2001); (Originally published, New York: Vintage Books, 1963), 104. Bellamy has endeavored to decipher the names of the other two gods in his, “Arabic Names in the Chanson De Roland: Saracen Gods, Frankish Swords, Roland's Horse, and the Olifant,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 107, no. 2 (1987): 267–72. Stefano Mula, “Muhammad and the Saints: The History of the Prophet in the Golden Legend,” Modern Philology 101, no. 2 (2003): 179, 185. Some unique perspectives on the sources for Dante's tale regarding the Prophet Muhammad can be found in Karla Mallette, “Muhammad in Hell,” Dante Studies, with the Annual Report of the Dante Society, no. 125 (2007): 207–24.
26 José Martínez Gázquez and Andrew Gray, “Translations of the Qur’an and Other Islamic Texts before Dante (Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries),” Dante Studies, with the Annual Report of the Dante Society, no. 125 (2007): 80.
27 Róbert Simon, “Remarks on Ramon Lull's Relation to Islam,” Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 51, no. 1 and 2 (1998): 21–9.
28 Barthold Altaner, “Zur Kenntniss des Arabischen im 13. und 14. Jahrhunderts,” Orientalia Christiana Periodica 2 (1936): 440–8.
29 Brannon M. Wheeler, “Guillaume Postel and the Primordial Origins of the Middle East,” Method & Theory in the Study of Religion 25, no. 3 (2013): 247.
30 Marco Polo, Le Devisement du monde, trans. Sharon Kinoshita, The Description of the World (Cambridge: Hacket Publishing, 2016), 33–4 n41.
31 Joseph Freiherr von Hammer-Purgstall, Die Geschichte der Assassinen, aus Morgenländischen Quellen (Stuttgart and Tübingen: F.G. Cottaschen Buchhandlung, 1818); von Hammer-Purgstall, History of the Assassins.
32 Hodgson, Order of Assassins.
33 Marshall G.S. Hodgson, “The Ismāʿīlī State,” in The Cambridge History of Iran: The Saljuq and Mongol Periods, ed. John Andrew Boyle, 7 vols., vol. 5 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), 423, 424 n1.
34 Lewis, Assassins.
35 Marshall G.S. Hodgson, The Secret Order of Assassins: The Struggle of the Early Nizārī Ismāʿīlīs against the Islamic World (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005).
36 In this regard, see Shafique N. Virani, The Ismailis in the Middle Ages: A History of Survival, A Search for Salvation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 106.
37 Jean-Patrick Guillaume, “Les Ismaéliens dans le Roman de Baybarṣ: Genèse d’un type littéraire,” Studia Islamica 84, no. 2 (November 1996).
38 Nasseh Ahmad Mirza, Syrian Ismailism: The Ever Living Line of the Imamate (Richmond: Curzon, 1997), 65–6.
39 F.M. Chambers, “The Troubadours and the Assassins,” Modern Language Notes 64, no. 4 (1949).
40 Vladimir Bartol, Alamut (Ljubljana: Založba Modra Ptica, 1938).
41 Simona Škrabec, “The Price of Leaving the Anonymity of a ‘Small Literature’. Vladimir Bartol, Alamut, 1938,” Interlitteraria 10 (2005): 353.
42 Mirt Komel, “Re-Orientalizing the Assassins in Western Historical-Fiction Literature: Orientalism and Self-Orientalism in Bartol's Alamut, Tarr's Alamut, Boschert's Assassins of Alamut and Oden's Lion of Cairo,” European Journal of Cultural Studies 17, no. 5 (October 2014): 525. “ … in forerunners … ” emended as “ … into forerunners … .”
43 Franc Križnar, “On Alamut, an Opera in Three Acts, By Matjaž Jarc,” Fontes Artis Musicae 55, no. 2 (April-June 2008); Edge Staff, “The Making Of: Assassin's Creed,” Edge, August 27, 2012. Access date: April 21, 2019. https://web.archive.org/web/20131228044009/http://www.edge-online.com/features/making-assassins-creed/.
44 For a detailed study, see Virani, Ismailis in the Middle Ages, 7–9, 22, 92 et passim.
45 Steven M. Wasserstrom, “Islamicate History of Religions?,” History of Religions 27, no. 4 (1988): 405.
46 Paul Ernest Walker, Ḥamīd al-Dīn al-Kirmānī: Ismaili Thought in the Age of al-Ḥākim (London: I.B. Tauris in association with the Institute of Ismaili Studies, 1999), 55.
47 Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Karīm ibn Abī Bakr Aḥmad al-Shahrastānī, al-Milal wa’l-niḥal, ed. Sayyid Muḥammad ʿImādī (Seyyed Muhammad Emadi) Ḥāʾirī (Haeri), Tarjamah-yi kitāb al-milal wa’l-niḥal az mutarjimī-yi nāshinākhtah, nuskhah-yi bargardān-i dastnawīs-i shumārah-yi 2371-i kitābkhānah-yi Ayāṣūfiyā (Istānbūl), Facsimile ed. (Tihrān: Markaz-i Pizhūhishī-yi Mīrāth-i Maktūb (Miras-e Maktoob) bā hamkārī-yi Muʾassasah-yi Muṭālaʿāt-i Ismāʿīlī (The Institute of Ismaili Studies), 1395 HS/2016 CE), 123.
48 Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Karīm ibn Abī Bakr Aḥmad al-Shahrastānī, al-Milal wa’l-niḥal, ed. ʿAlī Ḥasan Fāʿūr and Amīr ʿAlī Muhannā, 3rd ed., 2 vols. (Bayrūt: Dār al-Maʿrifah, 1414 AH/1993 CE), 17; Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Karīm ibn Abī Bakr Aḥmad al-Shahrastānī, al-Milal wa’l-niḥal, trans. A.K. Kazi and J.G. Flynn, Muslim Sects and Divisions: The Section on Muslim Sects in Kitāb al-Milal wa’l-Niḥal (London: Kegan Paul International, 1984), 8. Translation slightly modified.
49 Naṣīr al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad Ṭūsī and Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn Ḥasan-i Maḥmūd-i Kātib, Rawḍah-yi taslīm (Taṣawwurāt), ed. Sayyid Jalāl Ḥusaynī (Seyyed Jalal Hosseini) Badakhshānī (Badakhchani), 1st [Mīrāth-i Maktūb] ed. (Tihrān: Markaz-i Pizhūhishī-yi Mīrāth-i Maktūb (Miras-e Maktoob) bā hamkārī-yi Muʾassasah-yi Muṭālaʿāt-i Ismāʿīlī (The Institute of Ismaili Studies), 1393 HS/2014 CE), 123; Naṣīr al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad Ṭūsī and Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn Ḥasan-i Maḥmūd-i Kātib, Rawḍah-yi taslīm (Taṣawwurāt), ed. and trans. Seyyed Jalal Hosseini Badakhchani, Paradise of Submission: A Medieval Treatise on Ismaili Thought; A New Persian Edition and English Translation of Naṣīr al-Dīn Tūsī's Rawḍa-yi taslīm (London: I.B. Tauris in association with Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2005), 144. Translation slightly modified.
50 Shafique N. Virani, “Early Nizari Ismailism: A Critical Edition and Annotated Translation of Khwajah Qasim Tushtari's Recognizing God,” Iran: Journal of the British Institute of Persian Studies 57, no. 2 (2019): 250. Translation slightly modified. See also Virani, “Alamūt, Ismailism and Khwāja Qāsim Tushtarī's Recognizing God”; Virani, “Persian Poetry,”.
51 This extract is from my forthcoming critical edition and translation of the text. Cf. Shams Shams al-Dīn ibn Aḥmad (or Muḥammad) ibn Yaʿqūb al-Ṭayyibī (attrib.), al-Dustūr wa-daʿwat al-muʾminīn li’l-ḥuḍūr in Arbaʿ rasāʾil Ismāʿīliyyah, ed. ʿĀrif Tāmir, 2nd ed., Bayrūt: Maktabat al-ḥayāt, 1978, 51.
52 Naṣīr al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad Ṭūsī, Sayr ū sulūk, ed. and trans. Seyyed Jalal Hosseini Badakhchani, Contemplation and Action: The Spiritual Autobiography of a Muslim Scholar (London: I.B. Tauris in association with Institute of Ismaili Studies, 1999).
53 Nāṣir al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Raḥīm ibn Abī Manṣūr Muḥtasham and Naṣīr al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad Ṭūsī, Akhlāq-i Muḥtashamī (Tihrān: Dānishgāh-i Tihrān, Dānishkadah-yi ʿulūm-i maʿqūl wa manqūl, 1339 HS/1960 CE), 54. A complete translation of this work is in an advanced state of preparation.
54 Naṣīr al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad Ṭūsī, Maṭlūb al-muʾminīn in Shiʿi Interpretations of Islam: Three Treatises on Theology and Eschatology; A Persian Edition and English Translation of Tawallā wa tabarrā, Maṭlūb al-muʾminīn and Āghāz wa anjām of Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī, ed. and trans. Seyyed Jalal Hosseini Badakhchani, Desideratum of the Faithful. London: I.B. Tauris in association with Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2010, ed. 23, cf. trans. 38–9, my translation.
55 Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn Ḥasan-i Maḥmūd-i Kātib, Dīwān-i qāʾimiyyāt, ed. Sayyid Jalāl Ḥusaynī (Seyyed Jalal Hosseini) Badakhshānī (Badakhchani), Poems of the Resurrection, 2nd ed. (Tihrān: Markaz-i Pizhūhishī-yi Mīrāth-i Maktūb (Miras-e Maktoob) bā hamkārī-yi Muʾassasah-yi Muṭālaʿāt-i Ismāʿīlī (The Institute of Ismaili Studies), 1395 HS/2016 CE), no. 50, 152–3, lns. 1523–6, 1531, 1546. My translation.
56 Eva Orthmann and Petra G. Schmidl, eds., Science in the City of Fortune: The Dustūr al-munajjimīn and its World (Berlin: EB-Verlag, 2017).
57 Shafique N. Virani, “The Right Path: A Post-Mongol Persian Ismaili Treatise,” Journal of Iranian Studies 43, no. 2 (April 2010): ed. 213, trans. 205. Translation slightly modified. See also Henry Corbin, “The Ismāʿīlī Response to the Polemic of Ghazālī,” chap. 4, trans. James Morris in Ismāʿīlī Contributions to Islamic Culture, ed. Seyyed Hossein Nasr (Tehran: Imperial Iranian Academy of Philosophy, 1977), 79.