The History of the Assassins, Derived from Oriental Sources

by Freiherr von Joseph Hammer-Purgstall

We shall mention here, in passing, as they are neighbours of the Ismailites, the Nossairis, the Motewellis, and the Druses, three sects anathematized by the Moslems, on account of their infidelity and lawlessness. Their doctrine agrees, in many points, with that of the Ismailites; their founders having been animated with the same spirit of extravagant fanaticism,—of unprincipled licentiousness. The Nossairis and Druses are both older in their origin than the eastern Ismailites; the former having appeared in Syria, as a branch of the Karmathites, as early as the fifth century of the Hegira; the latter received their laws from Hamsa, a missionary of Hakem-biemrillah’s from the lodge of Cairo. The former believe, like the Ismailites, in the incarnation of the divinity in Ali; the latter consider that maddest of tyrants, Hakem-biemrillah, as a god in the flesh. Both abjure all the rules of Islamism, or only observe them in appearance; both hold secret and nocturnal assemblies stigmatized by the Moslimin, where they give themselves up to the enjoyment of wine and promiscuous intercourse.

The origin and doctrine of the Motewelli is less known than that of the Nossairis and Druses. Their name is corrupted from Motewilin, the interpreters; and therefore, probably, indicates a sect of the Ismailites, who taught the Tenvil, or allegorical interpretation of the commands of Islamism, in opposition to the Tensil, or positive letter of the word, not from God, the sense of which is a command to the true believer.[294]

The reproach of immorality, which these sects share in common, is certainly much more applicable to the Motewellis than to their neighbours. For the inhabitants of the village of Martaban, on the road from Latakia to Aleppo, who offer travellers the enjoyment of their wives and daughters, and who consider their refusal as an affront, are Motewellis.[295]

In still worse report than the Ismailites, Motewellis, Nossairis and Druses, are some tribes of Syrian and Assyrian kurds, who are called Yezidis, because they hold in peculiar veneration Yezid, the khalif of the Ommia family, who persecuted, sanguinarily, the family of the prophet, and likewise the devil, neither of whom they curse like other Moslimin. Their sheikh is called Karabash, that is, Blackhead, because he covers his head with a black scarf. The name of their founder is Sheikh Hadi, who, according to opinion, prayed, fasted, and gave alms for all his future disciples; so that they believe themselves exempted from these duties of Mohammedanism, and that, in consideration of his merits, they will go to heaven without appearing before the tribunal of God.[296]

All these still existing sects are designated by the Moslimin, generally, Sindike (free-thinkers), Mulhad (impious), and Batheni (esoterics), and, on account of their nocturnal assemblies, sometimes the one, sometimes the other, receive from the Turks the name of Mumsoindiren, or the extinguishers; because, according to the accusations of their religious adversaries, they extinguish the lights, for the purpose of indulging in promiscuous intercourse, without regard to kindred or sex.

Similar charges have been, at all times, raised against secret societies, whenever they concealed their mysteries under the veil of night; sometimes groundlessly, as against the assemblies of the early Christians, of whose innocence Pliny affords a testimony; sometimes but too well founded, as against the mysteries of Isis, and, still earlier, against the Bacchanalia of Rome. As the latter was the first secret society mentioned in Roman history, as dangerous to the state, and which assumed religion as a cloak to every enormity, the similarity of the subject, renders the mentioning them not out of place here.

As, in the sixth century, after the flight of the prophet, and the establishment of Islamism, the pest of the Ismailites threatened, under the appearance of religion, to undermine and overthrow the edifice, so, also, in the sixth century, after the foundation of Rome and the republic, the pest of the Bacchanalians, menaced the ruin of the city and the state, under the mask of religion.[297]

“A Greek, of mean extraction,” says Livy, “came first into Etruria, skilled in none of the arts which that most learned of all nations has devoted to the culture of the mind and the body, but a sacrificer and soothsayer; not that he spread his doctrine by public teaching, or filling the mind with a sacred horror, but, as the president of secret and nocturnal sacrifices. At first, but few were initiated; afterwards, however, the people, both men and women, were admitted. In order to attract the mind the more, wine and banquets were added to religious sacrifices. When the intoxication of the wine, night, the mixture of the sexes, and of youth and age, had extinguished every shadow of shame, vice and corruption of all kinds burst forth, every one having at hand the means of gratifying his desires. There was not merely one species of vice and the mere promiscuous intercourse of noble youths and maidens; but also from this source proceeded false witnesses, false documents, false informations, and accusations, poisoning, and secret murder,—so secret, indeed, that even the bodies of the dead were not found for sepulchre. Much was attempted by stratagem, but most by violence. Violence remained concealed, because, in the midst of the yells, and noise of cymbals and drums, the cries of the violated and the murdered could not be heard.”

The consul, Posthumus, had no sooner given intelligence to the senate of the discovery of the existence and object of this secret society, than the latter adopted the most powerful measures, for the safety of the state and the commonweal, and proceeded against the members of the Bacchanalia, as criminals against the state, with the utmost rigour. The speech of the consul to the people, advised them to watch over the peril which threatened the state, from the conspiracy of vice with religion. “I am not sure (said he) that some of you may not have fallen into error; for nothing has a more deceptive appearance than corrupted religion. When the Deity is made a cloak for iniquity, the mind is seized with terror, lest, in the punishment of human imposture, some divine law may be transgressed.” This unveiling of crime, from which the mask of religion had been torn, and the rigour with which the Bacchanalians were persecuted, not only in Rome, but also throughout Italy, with the sword and exile, stifled, in its birth, the monster whose increasing strength menaced the state with ruin. Had the princes of the east acted in the same spirit towards the first secret societies and the emissaries of the lodge of Cairo, as the senate and consuls had done, the sect of the Ismailites would never have attained political influence, nor would the blood-dropping branch of Assassins have sprouted from that poisonous stem.

Unfortunately, as we have seen in the course of this history, several princes were themselves devoted to the secret doctrine of infidelity and immorality, and others were deficient in strength to restrain its progress with effect. Thus, through the blindness of princes and the weakness of governments—through the credulity of nations, and the criminal presumption of an ambitious adventurer, like Hassan Sabah, the monstrous existence of secret societies and an imperium in imperio, attained so frightful an extent and power, that the murderer seated himself openly upon the throne, and the unbounded dominion of the dagger in the hands of the Assassins was an object of terror to princes and rulers, and insulted mankind in a manner unexampled and unique in history. We have, more than once, briefly pointed out the analogy which the constitution of the order of the Assassins presents with contemporary or more modern orders; but, although so many points of similarity are found, which can neither be accidental nor yet spring from the same cause, but which, probably, through the medium of the Crusades, passed from the spirit of the east into that of the west, they are still insufficient to make a perfect companion to the order of the Assassins, which, thank Heaven, has hitherto been without parallel. The Templars, incontrovertibly, stand in the next rank to them; their secret maxims, particularly in so far as relates to the renunciation of positive religion, and the extension of their power by the acquisition of castles and strong places, seem to have been the same as those of the order of the Assassins. The accordance, likewise, of the white dress and red fillets of the Assassins, with the white mantle and red cross of the Templars, is certainly remarkably striking.