Nizari Ismaili State

Also known as the Assassins, Hashashin, Order of Assassins

Network of Isma'ili mountain fortresses in Persia and Syria — the 'Assassins' of the Latin sources — whose practice of targeted political killing made them a small but uniquely feared element of crusading-era Levantine politics.

The Nizari state was founded in 1090 when Hassan-i Sabbah, an Isma'ili da'i in revolt against the Seljuk sultanate, seized the mountain fortress of Alamut in the Elburz of northern Persia. From Alamut the Nizaris built a decentralised network of self-governing fortified communities, propagating an esoteric Isma'ili doctrine and defending themselves not by armies — they had none — but by a discipline of trained killers who would assassinate hostile rulers, often at the cost of their own lives.

The Syrian branch, founded in the early twelfth century from Alamut, fortified a string of Jebel Bahra strongholds — Masyaf, Qadmus, Kahf, Khawabi, al-Ullaiqah — directly across the inland frontier from the Crusader principality of Antioch and the County of Tripoli. Under their most famous master Rashid ad-Din Sinan, 'the Old Man of the Mountain' (d. c. 1192), they paid tribute by turn to Saladin and to the Templars, and were credited with the murder of Conrad of Montferrat at Tyre in April 1192 and at least two attempts on Saladin himself.

The Persian Nizari state was destroyed by the Mongols in 1256 when Hulagu Khan reduced Alamut and its sister fortresses one by one. The Syrian fortresses lasted slightly longer, until the Mamluk sultan Baybars stripped them of their independence between 1265 and 1273. The community survived as a religious tradition — Isma'ili Nizaris are now led by the Aga Khan — but as a political and military force it ended with Baybars.

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