A Journey to the Valley of the Assassins
lawyers of Philippe le Bel. By then the Assassins had ceased
to be an active power.
No longer independent, the Syrian Fedawis degenerated
from martyrs into professional murderers. In the days of
Ibn Batuta their crimes used to be paid for in advance: if
they survived, they enjoyed their earnings, which otherwise
went to support their families. They are now quiet country
people, and talk freely of anything except their religion.
But in Persia the Mongol armies came from the east and
in 1256 under Hulagu Khan took the Assassin fortresses one
after the other. The central stronghold of Alamut might
and should have held out. It stands in an impregnable valley
south of the Caspian in the legendary mountain range of
the earliest fabulous Persian kings. Hasan had come there
when, nearing forty, a failure and an exile from both the
Turkish and the Egyptian courts, he decided to carve his
own way unaided, and had spread his propaganda for nine
years through Persia and Khorasan: and the tale has it that
after being the governor's guest and seeing the matchless
strength of the position, he returned and obtained it in 1091,
seemingly by friendly means; and never left it until his
death thirty-four years later. He lived there with his secret
garden and his devoted Fedawis around him, and combined
assassination with the liberal arts in his efficient way. But
after nearly two hundred years, madness and weakness came
upon the sovereigns of Alamut. Rukneddin, a hostage
among the Mongols, ordered his unwilling garrisons to
surrender before Mangu the Great Khan caused him to be
murdered as he travelled, a prisoner, through the passes of
the hills; and his posterity, migrating southward to Qum
and thence to Sindh, continued in the spiritual headship of
the Isma'ilians who still exist scattered from India to Persia
Zanzibar. H.H. the Agha Khan receives, a$ head of the
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