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Books > History > Asian / Middle Eastern history
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The Assassin Legends - Myths of the Isma'ilis (Hardcover)
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The Assassin Legends - Myths of the Isma'ilis (Hardcover)
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For hundreds of years Westerners have been fascinated by stories of
the Assassins, their mysterious leader and their remote mountain
stronghold at Alamut in Northern Iran. The legends first emerged in
the 12th and 13th centuries, when Crusaders in Syria came into
contact with the Nazari Isma'ilis, one of the communities of
Shi'ite Islam who, at the behest of their leader Hassan Sabaa
(mythologized as the "Old Man of the Mountain"), engaged in
dangerous missions to kill their enemies. Elaborated over the
years, the tales culminated in Marco Polo's claim that the "Old
Man" controlled the behaviour of his self-sacrificing devotees
through the use of hashish and a secret garden of paradise. So
influential were these tales that the word "assassin" entered
European languages as a common noun meaning "murderer". Daftary
traces the origins and early development of the legends - as well
as investigating the historical context in which they were
fabricated and transmitted. As such, this book reveals an
extraordinary programme of propaganda rooted in the medieval Muslim
world and medieval Europe's ignorance of this world. This book also
provides the first English translation of French orientalist
Silvestre de Sacy's famous 19th-century "Memoire" on the Assassins.
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