A Journey to the Valley of the Assassins
I walked with the sun at my back through this open pastu
and thought of what strange destinies had climbed the p;
before.
Hasan himself must have glanced up at the mass of
castle and the cliffs behind it with an appraising eye wl
the Pates and his own fearless spirit were weaving his futi
The disciple strode down here unquestioning to murder
chieftain's son. Rashid-ed-Din came penniless and on £
from Basra, stayed to spend his youth in study with his yoi
lords, and finally left to end as the equal of kings in Syri
That was in the days of the third Grand Master Muhs
mad, when Hasan, the young heir, thought to throw a-v
the last vestige of Moslem tradition and to claim divinity
himself as so many like him had done before. Many a t
the two friends must have walked along these hills
talking over their revolutionary plans and spreading tl
in the houses of the villagers, till the anger of the old c
put a stop to it all for a time and the reformers had to i
for his death. That was in 1162. Hasan then allo^
wine to be drunk in the valley, and abolished the for
prayers, and renounced even the nominal allegiance
Egypt. The old books which he studied, written by
namesake and kept with many others in the library on
Rock, would throw much light on the ideas which gover
the valley at this time, what Manichean or Magian her
with possibly some pagan survival of philosophy lingei
as among the Sabaeans of Harran.
Then the Mongols came, and their slant-eyed arr
must have camped in these meadows through the wri
months till the Rock capitulated and the devastating he
went by, and the heretical library was burnt and lost for e
The castle fell to ruin till other obscure lords somewl
about the eighteenth century settled there again; of wl
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