A second embassy having no better effect, Bibars gave orders for the castle to be besieged. On this, Shemseddin left Kehef, and repaired to the sultan, who was encamped before Hama, and was honourably received; receiving, however, intelligence in a letter, that the inhabitants of Kehef had sent Assassins into the camp, in order to murder his principal emirs, Bibars caused Shemseddin and all his suite to be arrested, and carried into Egypt. At the same time, two officers of the order, who had persuaded their friends in the castle of Khawabi, to surrender to the sultan, were seized at Sarmin. This castle surrendered to negotiation, that of Kolaia to force; and, in the following year, those of Menifa and Kadmus fell into the sultan’s hands. The inhabitants of Kehef wished to oppose a longer resistance; but being closely blockaded, and cut off from all relief, they at length sent Bibars the keys of the town; and the Emir Jemaleddin Akonsa made his entry on the 22d of Silvide.
From this moment, Bibars was master of all the forts and castles which had been in the possession of the Ismailites; and he ruined their power in Syria, as Hulaku had done in Persia. Next to Massiat, the residence of the grand-master, Shiun, a strong place on a rock, abundantly supplied with water,[282] and at a short day’s journey from Latakia, had been lately particularly distinguished, by the valiant exploits of its commandant, Hamsa, one of the greatest heroes among the Syrian Ismailites. This Hamsa must not be confounded with Hamsa, the companion of the prophet, and one of the bravest heroes of Mohammedanism; nor with Hamsa, the founder of the religion of the Druses. The numerous battles and enterprises of the Assassins, their valorous defence against the armies of the Crusaders, and the Egyptian sultan, Bibars, and the adventurous character of their whole history, offered a fertile source to the Syrian romance writers and story-tellers; a source of which they did not fail to avail themselves.
This was the origin of the Hamsaname, or Hamsiads,[283] a kind of chivalrous romance, modelled after the style of the Antar, Dulhemmet, Benihilal, and other Egyptian works. After the conquest of Syria, by the Ottomans, the tales of the feats and adventures of Hamsa passed from the mouths of the Arabian story-tellers and coffee-house orators, to those of the Turks; and Hamsa, together with Sid Battal (Cid y Campeador) the proper Cid of the orientals, an Arabian hero, who fell in battle against the Greeks, at the siege of Constantinople, by Harun al Rashid,[284] afforded the richest materials for Turkish romances, which are exclusively occupied by the feats of Hamsa and Sid Battal. The tomb of the Sid in the Anatolian Sanjak Sultanoghi is, to this day, a much frequented resort of pilgrimages, enriched by the Sultan Suleiman, the legislator, with the endowment of a mosque, a convent, and an academy.[285]
The conquest of Massiat was succeeded by that of Alika, and, at length, two years after, by that of Kahaf, Mainoka Kadmus, and of the other castles on the Antilebanon; and thus the power of the Ismailites was overthrown, both in Syria and Persia. One of their last attempts at assassination is said to have been directed against the person of St. Louis, King of France, but the falsity of this supposition has already been demonstrated, by French writers.[286]
The power of the Ismailites had now terminated, both in Persia and Syria; the citadels of the grand-master, in Rudbar, and of the grand-priors, in Kuhistan and Syria, had fallen; the bands of the Assassins were massacred and scattered; their doctrine was publicly condemned, yet, nevertheless, continued to be secretly taught, and the order of the Assassins, like that of the Jesuits, endured long after its suppression. In Kuhistan, in particular, remains of them still existed; that being a region which, on account of its very mountainous character, was more impracticable than the surrounding countries, and, being less accessible to the persecutors of the order, it afforded the partisans of the latter a more secure asylum.
Seventy years after the taking of Alamut and Bagdad, in the reign of Hulaku’s eighth successor, Abu Said Behadir Khan, the great protector of the sciences, to whom Wassaf dedicated his history, the whole of Kuhistan was devoted to the pernicious sect of the Ismailites, and the doctrine of Islamism had not yet been able to enter the hearts of the natives, hard as their mountain rocks. Abusaid determined, in concert with the lieutenant of the province, Shah Ali Sejestani, to send an apostolic mission, for the conversion of these miscreants and infidels. At the head of the society of missionaries, which was composed of zealous divines, was the Sheikh Amadeddin, surnamed of Bokhara, one of the most esteemed jurisconsults, who, on the destruction of that city, had fled to Kuhistan. His grandson, Jelali, in his work, “Nassaih-ol-Moluk” (Counsels for Kings), dedicated to the Sultan Shahrokh, the son of Timur, relates the history of this mission from the mouth of his father, who had accompanied his grandfather to Kuhistan.[287]
Amadeddin, with his two sons, Hossameddin and Nejmeddin, the father of Jelali, and four other Ulemas, in all seven persons, went to Kain, the chief seat of the Ismailites; where, since the illuminative period of Hassan II., the mosques had fallen down, the pious institutions decayed—where the word of the Koran was no longer heard from the pulpit, nor the call to prayers sounded from the minaret. As prayer, five times a day, is the first of the duties of Islamism, and the call to it proclaims aloud the creed of the faithful, Amadeddin resolved to commence his mission with it. He went, therefore, with his six companions armed, to the terrace of the castle of Kain, from whence, they began, at the same instant, to cry out on all sides: “Say God is great! there is no God but God, and Mohammed is his prophet. To prayers! Up! to do good!” This summons, to which the unbelieving inhabitants had long been unaccustomed, instead of collecting them in the mosque, excited them to a tumult against the summoners; and, although the latter had taken the precaution to be armed, they did not deem it expedient to purchase the crown of martyrdom with their lives, by defending themselves, but took refuge in a drain, where they hid. As soon as the people were dispersed, they again mounted the terrace, and repeated the call to prayers, and the retreat to the drain. In this manner, their obstinate zeal, supported by the power of the governor, succeeded in accustoming the ears of the infidels to the formula of the summons to prayer, and then to that of prayer itself; and sowed the good seed of the true doctrine of Islamism on the waste field of infidelity and atheism.[288]
While the political wisdom of Abusaid was endeavouring to extirpate the Ismailite doctrine in Persia, its ashes still smouldered in Syria; and, from time to time, threw out destructive flames, which were extinguished in the blood of the slaughtered victims. As it had originated in Egypt, and had but served as an instrument of the ambitious designs of the Fatimites; so the Circassian sultans of that country availed themselves of the last fruits of the wide-spread tree of murderous policy, in order to execute their revenge, and to try the dagger on those enemies who resisted the sword. A memorable instance of such an attempt, is afforded us in the history of the Emir Kara Sonkor, who had deserted the court of the Egyptian sultans, and had entered into the service of the khan of the Mongols.
Two years after[289] Abusaid had sent the before-mentioned learned Jelali to Kuhistan, the Egyptian sultan, Mohammed, the son of Bibars, sent no less than thirty Assassins from Massiat to Persia, to sacrifice the Emir Kara Sonkor to his vengeance. They arrived at Tebris, and the first having been cut to pieces in his murderous attempt, the report was soon spread that Assassins were come to murder the Khan Abusaid, the Emir Juban, the Vizier Ali Shah, and all the Mongol nobles. A second attempt on the life of Kara Sonkor cost, like the former one, that of the murderer. A similar attack had been made on the governor of Bagdad, and Abusaid, the great khan, prudently shut himself up in his tent for eleven days. Nevertheless, the Egyptian sultan, Mohammed, did not give up his vengeful attempt on the life of Kara Sonkor. He sent a merchant, named Yunis, to Tebris, with a large sum of money, to hire new Assassins. Yunis sent for them from Massiat, and concealed them in his house. One day, as the Emir Juban was riding in company with the Emirs Kara Sonkor and Afrem, two Assassins watched a favourable opportunity to murder the two latter. The first assailant, who was too hasty in his attack on the Emir Afrem, only tore his clothes with his dagger, instead of wounding his breast, and being cut down on the spot, the second did not think it advisable to approach Kara Sonkor.
Inquiries were immediately set on foot into the Funduks (Fondaeki) of Tebris, for the purpose of discovering the haunts of the Assassins; the merchant, Yunis, was arrested, but his life was preserved by the interest of the vizier. The Emirs Afrem and Kara Sonkor took all necessary precautions for the preservation of their own. A servant of the latter, a native of Massiat, searched the whole city of Tebris, to find out the Assassin who was to have poniarded his lord; and found him, at last, in the person of his own brother. The emir, in order to gain him over, gave him a hundred pieces of gold, and a monthly salary of three hundred dirhems, together with other presents; for which, he was induced to betray his accomplices. One of them escaped; another stabbed himself; a third expired under the torture, without confessing anything.