A Journey to the Valley of the Assassins
bearing on the old descriptions of the Assassins' stronghold,
it is worth mentioning before the natural Persian amiability
makes the people of the Qasir Rud valley rechristen their
fortress to please the yearly visitor. Except for these, who
had learnt it from foreigners, I met no one in the whole
region who would know where to direct one if one asked
for Alamut. " You are in Alamut now," they would
say, and sweep their arm over the long reach of the valley
in its mountain cradle.
Whatever its name, the great Rock looks a grim place.
Mount Haudegan behind it rises in shaly slopes with granite
precipices above. A green patch high up shows a small
spring whence, said the guide, with obliging inventiveness,
the castle's water supply was drawn in conduits. East and
west of the rock, far below, run the two streams that form
the Qasir Rud; they eat their way through scored and naked
beds. There is no green of grass until, beyond a neck that
joins the castle to this desolate background, one climbs
under its eastern lee, reaches the level by old obliterated
steps, and from the southern end looks down nearly a
thousand feet of stone to the fields and trees of Qasir Khan,
the sunny shallow slopes of the northern bank, and beyond
the Alamut River, to the glaciers of Elburz in the south-east
and the heights of Chala beyond Shirkuh in the west.
Here from some buttress in the castle wall, Hasan-i-Sabbah
could watch for the return of his Fedawis. Here, no doubt,
he would look out for his messengers when the benefactor
and enemy of his youth, Nizam-ul-Mulk, the great minister,
sent his army against him; and from here perhaps saw the
emissary striding up by the Qasir Rud to say that the
Assassins' work was done. Here as an old man he might
stroll in the last sunlight and look on his lands already in
shadow, peaceful below him with their crops. The place
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