 When your story is told over and over again by those who despise you, nothing kind will be said. And if you distill the spoken and written about you, not much will be left from a factual standpoint. And for the Nizadi Ismayedis, better known for their order of the assassins, this inaccurate history would go on to put them on a pedestal as one of the most feared groups in history. Their story is told by those who either disagreed with their beliefs or who feared them greatly. The Sunnis, the Shi'a Twelvers, the Crusaders, the Orientalists. In all cases, a mission to discredit and dehumanize the Ismayedis would eventually lead to a fabricated world of lore and myth. My mission for this video is to shed light on these untruths and separate the fact from the fiction. It might not be attractive to those who seek a retelling of the Hollywood-ish assassins legend that has recirculated over the many centuries, but in any case, it will definitely be revealing. Before we get into the details of the order of the assassins, it's imperative that we look at who they were. As a people, where did they come from? They just didn't happen to pop up at notoriety to become this feared group of guerrilla-esque hitmen. And the best way to start is with their name, the Nizadi Ismayedis. For starters, they were a subgroup of a subgroup of Shi'a Muslims. The first subgroup were the Ismayedis, when the 9th century became a minority Shi'a group, when they split from the more dominant Twovers. The second subset was the Nizadi label that was earned due to their belief and loyalty to the eldest son of Imam al-Mustansar-Billah, Nizar, who was in their opinion the rightful heir to the Fatimid Imamah. Nizar would ultimately be executed by the Fatimid court when his younger brother al-Mustassal became the new Fatimid Imamah. So began the expulsion and persecution of the newly created religious sect, the Nizadi Ismayedis. Hassan al-Sabah was an educated and learned man who was part of the Fatimid court and who as the founder selflessly promoted the Nizadi cause. This led to his eventual imprisonment in Egypt and subsequent expulsion. That's when Hassan decided to return to his homeland in Persia. Soon thereafter, he began preaching his Nizadi beliefs throughout Persia. And that didn't sit too well with the then Sunni-dominated Persian powers. This brought Hassan al-Sabah to the attention of Nizam al-Mulk, the grand vizier of the Seljuk Empire, who was renowned for hunting down those who did not abide by the teachings of the Sunni faith. Hassan soon discovered that he was a wanted man and in avoiding capture escaped to the mountains of northeastern Persia. There, he discovered the impenetrable fort of al-Mut and in a bloodless battle of savvy negotiation managed to take control of the stronghold with his incumbent of followers. And so started the first ever Nizadi Ismaili state in 1090. So what was life like as a Nizadi Ismaili in this new state? Was it all military training as in the old ways of Sparta? In becoming the fighters of legend? Sorry to say but no, the Nizadi way of life was mainly about a devotion to the faith. With a search for wisdom and knowledge and self-improvement, there were a pluralist group who were committed to the acceptance of racial, ethnic, cultural and inter-religious differences. They followed the principles of independent reasoning and social justice. The Nizadi lifestyle had no role in the military domain, but unfortunately life didn't work that way. Over their young history, the Nizadis were persecuted by the many larger and more powerful Muslim sects who saw them as a threat. There were people looking to expand their faith, but were also under constant duress and without the numerical means to resist militarily and to engage in war. Consequently, had to identify a new methodology of armed resistance never seen before. So one quick point to make, not all Nizadis were assassins. I make this distinction as we need to counter this perception that the entire fort of Alamut or any other Nizadi stronghold were solely military production lines for assassins. Yet nonetheless to resist effectively, the Nizadi's innovative defensive strategy required the highest of excellence and was served greatly by their highly educated and disciplined approach to life. And this new strategy was the selective assassination of political and military leaders and henceforth created an environment of chaos, desperation and indecision in their enemy. To use a simple modern analogy to represent the complexity of the skill and training of the Nizadi order of assassins leads me to refer to them as the James Bonds of the Middle Ages. Really educated, intelligent, with an unequaled ability to infiltrate, to blend in and yes, of course, expertise in demanding military and tactical training. The Nizadi assassins would at times be sent out to infiltrate other state courts as sleeper cells for several years prior to any assassination attempt. Familiarity and the trust of their victims were heavily desired as methods to gain tactical advantage for the moment of fatal truth. And this reason for this long clinical and calculated methodology was to confirm that when an assassination attempt would take place, it would occur with close proximity of a target's personal space. Why? So that the weapon of choice, the dagger, could be as mortally effective as possible. This approach brought about the element of fear into all their potential assassination targets and real doubts set in towards all who were within their loyal and intimate courts. Fifty years after the establishment of the Nizadi state in Persia, the Nizadis expanded into Syria. There, the castles of Mosquef and Abu Qubais fell under Nizadi control and brought them closer to the ongoing war between the crusaders and the Muslims. This expansion saw the role of the old man of the mountain, Rashid-Din Sinan. Trained from his youth as an assassin, Sinan would go on to become a prominent Nizadi leader during the height of the crusades. The GNU Muslim power base in the Levant put the Nizadis in the crosshairs of the Muslim leader Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi. Salah al-Din himself had persecuted the many non-Sunni Muslim sects and for him, the Nizadis became high on his hit list. In turn, this brought Salah al-Din to the attention of the Nizadis as a highly prioritized target and soon thereafter, the Nizadis twice attempted to assassinate the Sunni general but failed. Set up with the Nizadis, Salah al-Din marched on to Mosquef to end the Nizadis once and for all. But as the Ayyubid army laid siege to the fort, it is said that Sinan himself infiltrated the tent of the general and laid a handwritten note on his divan, stating that even he, the great Salah al-Din, was reachable by the order of the assassins and that this was his last warning. If he did not end the siege and oppression of the Nizadis, he would die. The Salah al-Din, immediately thereafter, agreed to truce with the Nizadis. For what would seem as a cult of bloodthirsty assassins as depicted in the various literature and misrepresented history out there, one would expect a substantial list of violence and victims over the two centuries of their existence. So let's play a guessing game. How many people did the order of the assassins kill? One thousand? Perhaps two? The real verifiable number is less than ninety, and that includes those who didn't die during their assassination attempts, such as Salah al-Din. There are even many question marks towards the attribution of certain assassinations of European leaders to the assassins, because for the first sixty years of their activity, only Muslim and mainly Sunnis in leadership positions had been their victims. However, if we do take the attributable ninety victims as fact and analyze it over the duration of the order's existence, then that would be a ratio of one assassination for every two years. Not so much a bloody death told expected of a sinister reputation as that of the assassins. In fact, I believe they were the most civilized and humane of the political states in the region during the eleventh to the thirteenth century. It was common for the Seljuks, Fatimids, Crusaders, and others to have killed hundreds if not thousands of Muslims and non-Muslims in any one given expansive or suppressive event. One thing for sure, when it came to the Nizadis, there was zero collateral damage, no civilian casualties throughout their history, hence in reality the common man or woman had nothing to fear. So why do we fear them? We fear them because of the likes of al-Ghazali, Marco Polo, William of Tyre, and Benjamin of Tudela, who for their own particular agendas misrepresented the Nizadis en masse as a treacherous and violent people. Many falsehoods were created to totally diminish the Nizadi society. The fact that all Nizadis were labeled assassins and that all assassins had to have been drugged up with hashish since that was the only way one could achieve such devotion to then want to sacrifice themselves for much larger cause, the name assassins was never about hashashin. It was about the Nizadis and their faith, to aspire to going back to the origins of their faith, to the assas, the foundation, and from this the resultant word assasi-yun, those following the foundations of the faith. Many other stories were concocted to explain the commitment by the Nizadis in their selfless assassination missions. One such legend told of how the old man in the mountain built a full-fledged paradise on earth and filled it with all the earthly and heavenly pleasures. He would then drug the young male candidates and bring them into this makeshift paradise, entering a dream state where they would experience a small bit of heaven. Upon exiting their hallucinogenic trip, the old man would explain that life on earth was a shadow of what it would be like in paradise. Hence, the willingness of the assassins to give up on life so easily. Creating an aura of fear is easy. Repeat the same thing over and over again while exaggerating the aggressions and rootlessness of one people. And you'll soon have a people who are feared for eternity. For Sunnis seeking to discredit the Nizadis, the literature produced was simple, to make them seem an ungodly and blasphemous sect. For the Trolver Shi'as, it was more of the same. To belittle a competing Shi'a faith that might have had more appeal. While for the cruciating Christians, all Islam was evil. But the Nizadis held an even higher place of hatred and fear. The Orientalists, well, they found and romanticized in the Nizadis an enemy that fit perfectly, their restricted and selective understanding of an uncivilized Islamic faith. The Nizadis deserve a more just reflection in history. Yes, they resorted to a certain typology of controlled violence in an age of human history that saw violence take place at an inconceivable level. But theirs was a need to survive. And even then, they barely did survive, following the Mongol invasion that wiped out their strongholds and states at the end of the 13th century. Maybe you prefer the other version of assassins, who are a cold-blooded group of violent anarchists wreaking havoc throughout the Middle East and the Middle Ages. I personally don't. I think there are a major misrepresentation of history that seeks to villainize Muslims, and to call them out as morally less. And I disagree wholeheartedly, even with the suggestion that there is a touch of truth to these black and dark legends.