Part 4 (1/2)
The founder of the Fatimite dynasty of the Khalifas was one Ubeidallah, known as the Mahdi, accused of Jewish ancestry by his adversaries the Abbasides, who declared--apparently without truth--that he was the son or grandson of Ahmed, son of Adbullah ibn Maymun, by a Jewess. Under the fourth Fatimite Khalifa Egypt fell into the power of the dynasty, and, before long, bi-weekly a.s.semblages of both men and women known as ”societies of wisdom” were inst.i.tuted in Cairo. In 1004 these acquired a greater importance by the establishment of the Dar ul Hikmat, or the House of Knowledge, by the sixth Khalifa Hakim, who was raised to a deity after his death and is wors.h.i.+pped to this day by the Druses. Under the direction of the Dar ul Hikmat or Grand Lodge of Cairo, the Fatimites continued the plan of Abdullah ibn Maymun's secret society with the addition of two more degrees, making nine in all. Their method of enlisting proselytes and system of initiation--which, as Claudio Jannet points out, ”are absolutely those which Weishaupt, the founder of the _Illuminati_, prescribed to the 'Insinuating Brothers'”[129]--were transcribed by the fourteenth-century historian Nowairi in a description that may be briefly summarized thus[130]:
The proselytes were broadly divided into two cla.s.ses, the learned and the ignorant. The Dai was to agree with the former, applauding his wisdom, and to impress the latter with his own knowledge by asking him perplexing questions on the Koran. Thus in initiating him into the first degree the Dai a.s.sumed an air of profundity and explained that religious doctrines were too abstruse for the ordinary mind, but must be interpreted by men who, like the Dais, had a special knowledge of this science. The initiate was bound to absolute secrecy concerning the truths to be revealed to him and obliged to pay in advance for these revelations. In order to pique his curiosity, the Dai would suddenly stop short in the middle of a discourse, and should the novice finally decline to pay the required sum, he was left in a state of bewilderment which inspired him with the desire to know more.
In the second degree the initiate was persuaded that all his former teachers were wrong and that he must place his confidence solely in those Imams endowed with authority from G.o.d; in the third he learnt that these Imams were those of the Ismailis, seven in number ending with Mohammed, son of Ismail, in contradistinction to the twelve Imams of the Imamias who supported the claims of Ismail's brother Musa; in the fourth he was told that the prophets preceding the Imams descending from Ali were also seven in number--namely Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, the first Mohammed, and finally Mohammed son of Ismail.
So far, then, nothing was said to the initiate in contradiction to the broad tenets of orthodox Islamism. But with the fifth degree the process of undermining his religion began, he was now told to reject tradition and to disregard the precepts of Mohammed; in the sixth he was taught that all religious observances--prayer, fasting, etc.--were only emblematic, that in fact all these things were devices to keep the common herd of men in subordination; in the seventh the doctrines of Dualism, of a greater and a lesser deity, were introduced and the unity of G.o.d--fundamental doctrine of Islamism--was destroyed; in the eighth a great vagueness was expressed on the attributes of the first and greatest of these deities, and it was pointed out that real prophets were those who concerned themselves with practical matters--political inst.i.tutions and good forms of government; finally, in the ninth, the adept was shown that all religious teaching was allegorical and that religious precepts need only be observed in so far as it is necessary to maintain order, but the man who understands the truth may disregard all such doctrines. Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and the other prophets were therefore only teachers who had profited by the lessons of philosophy.
All belief in revealed religion was thus destroyed. It will be seen then that in the last degrees the whole teaching of the first five was reversed and therefore shown to be a fraud. Fraud in fact const.i.tuted the system of the society; in the instructions to the Dais every artifice is described for enlisting proselytes by misrepresentation: Jews were to be won by speaking ill of Christians, Christians by speaking ill of Jews and Moslems alike, Sunnis by referring with respect to the orthodox Khalifas Abu Bakr and Omar and criticizing Ali and his descendants. Above all, care was to be taken not to put before proselytes doctrines that might revolt them, but to make them advance step by step. By these means they would be ready to obey any commands.
As the instructions express it:
If you were to give the order to whoever it might be to take from him all that he holds most precious, above all his money, he would oppose none of your orders, and if death surprised him he would leave you all that he possesses in his will and make you his heir.
He will think that in the whole world he cannot find a man more worthy than you.
Such was the great secret society which was to form the model for the Illuminati of the eighteenth century, to whom the summary of von Hammer might with equal truth apply:
To believe nothing and to dare all was, in two words, the sum of this system, which annihilated every principle of religion and morality, and had no other object than to execute ambitious designs with suitable ministers, who, daring all and knowing nothing, since they consider everything a cheat and nothing forbidden, are the best tools of an infernal policy. A system which, with no other aim than the gratification of an insatiable l.u.s.t for domination, instead of seeking the highest of human objects, precipitates itself into the abyss, and mangling itself, is buried amidst the ruins of thrones and altars, the wreck of national happiness, and the universal execration of mankind.[131]
The Druses
The terrible Grand Lodge of Cairo before long became the centre of a new and extraordinary cult. Hakim sixth Fatimite Khalifa and founder of the Dar ul Hikmat--a monster of tyranny and crime whose reign can only be compared to that of Caligula or Nero--was now raised to the place of a divinity by one Ismail Darazi, a Turk who in 1016 announced in a mosque in Cairo that the Khalifa should be made an object of wors.h.i.+p. Hakim, who ”believed that divine reason was incarnate in him,” four years later proclaimed himself a deity, and the cult was finally established by one of his viziers, the Persian mystic Hamza ibn Ali. Hakim's cruelties, however, had so outraged the people of Egypt that a year later he was murdered by a band of malcontents, led, it is said, by his sister, who afterwards concealed his body--a circ.u.mstance which gave his followers the opportunity to declare that the divinity had merely vanished in order to test the faith of believers, but would reappear in time and punish apostates. This belief became the doctrine of the Druses of Lebanon, whom Darazi had won over to the wors.h.i.+p of Hakim.
It is unnecessary to enter into the details of this strange religion, which still persists to-day in the range of Lebanon; suffice it to say that, although the outcome of the Ismailis, the Druses do not appear to have embraced the materialism of Abdullah ibn Maymun, but to have grafted on a primitive form of Nature-wors.h.i.+p and of Sabeism the avowed belief of the Ismailis in the dynasty of Ali and his successors, and beyond this an abstruse, esoteric creed concerning the nature of the Supreme Deity. G.o.d they declare to be ”Universal Reason,” who manifests Himself by a series of ”avatars.” Hakim was the last of the divine embodiments, and ”when evil and misery have increased to the predestined height he will again appear, to conquer the world and to make his religion supreme.”
It is, however, as a secret society that the Druses enter into the scope of this book, for their organization presents several a.n.a.logies with that which we now know as ”masonic.” Instead of the nine degrees inst.i.tuted by the Lodge of Cairo, the Druses are divided into only three--Profanes, Aspirants, and Wise--to whom their doctrines are gradually unfolded under seal of the strictest secrecy, to ensure which signs and pa.s.swords are employed after the manner of Freemasonry. A certain degree of duplicity appears to enter into their scheme, much resembling that enjoined to the Ismaili Dais when enlisting proselytes belonging to other religions: thus in talking to Mohammedans, the Druses profess to be followers of the Prophet; with Christians, they pretend to hold the doctrines of Christianity, an att.i.tude they defend on the score that it is unlawful to reveal the secret dogmas of their creed to a ”Black,” or unbeliever.
The Druses are in the habit of holding meetings where, as in the Dar ul Hikmat, both men and women a.s.semble and religious and political questions are discussed; the uninitiated, however, are allowed to exercise no influence on decisions, which are reached by the inner circle, to which only the ”Wise” are admitted. The resemblance between this organization and that of Grand Orient Freemasonry is clearly apparent. The Druses also have modes of recognition which are common to Freemasonry, and M. Achille Laurent has observed: ”The formula or catechism of the Druses resembles that of the Freemasons; one can learn it only from the _Akals_ (or Akels = Intelligent, a small group of higher initiates), who only reveal its mysteries after having subjected one to tests and made one take terrible oaths.”
I shall refer again later in this book to the affinity between the Druses and Freemasons of the Grand Orient.
The a.s.sa.s.sins
It will be seen that the Druses, distinguis.h.i.+ng themselves from other Ismaili sects by their wors.h.i.+p of Hakim, yet retaining genuine religious beliefs, had not carried on the atheistical tradition of Abdullah ibn Maymun and of the Grand Lodge of Cairo. But this tradition was to find in 1090 an exponent in the Persian Hasan Saba, a native of Khorasan, the son of Ali, a strict s.h.i.+ah, who, finding himself suspected of heretical ideas, ended by declaring himself a Sunni. Hasan, brought up in this atmosphere of duplicity, was therefore well fitted to play the Machiavellian role of an Ismaili Dai.
Von Hammer regards Hasan as a mighty genius, one of a splendid triad, of which the two others were his schoolfellows the poet Omar Khayyam and Nizam ul Mulk, Grand Vizier under the Seljuk Sultan, Malik Shah. Hasan, having through the protection of Nizam ul Mulk secured t.i.tles and revenues and finally risen to office at the Court of the Sultan, attempted to supplant his benefactor and eventually retired in disgrace, vowing vengeance against the Sultan and vizier. At this juncture he encountered several Ismailis, one of whom, a Dai named Mumin, finally converted him to the principles of his sect, and Hasan, declaring himself now to be a convinced adherent of the Fatimite Khalifas, journed to Cairo, where he was received with honour by the Dar ul Hikmat and also by the Khalifa Mustansir, to whom he became counsellor. But his intrigues once more involving him in disgrace, he fled to Aleppo and laid the foundations of his new sect. After enlisting proselytes in Bagdad, Ispahan, Khusistan, and Damaghan, he succeeded in obtaining by strategy the fortress of Alamut in Persia on the Caspian Sea, where he completed the plans for his great secret society which was to become for ever infamous under the name of the Has.h.i.+s.h.i.+yin, or _a.s.sa.s.sins_.
Under the pretence of belief in the doctrines of Islam and also of adherence to the Ismaili line of succession from the Prophet, Hasan Saba now set out to pave his way to power, and in order to achieve this end adopted the same method as Abdullah ibn Maymun. But the terrible efficiency of Hasan's society consisted in the fact that a system of physical force was now organized in a manner undreamt of by his predecessor. As von Hammer has observed in an admirable pa.s.sage:
Opinions are powerless, so long as they only confuse the brain, without arming the hand. Scepticism and free-thinking, as long as they occupied only the minds of the indolent and philosophical, have caused the ruin of no throne, for which purpose religious and political fanaticism are the strongest levers in the hands of nations. It is nothing to the ambitious man what people believe, but it is everything to know how he may turn them for the execution of his projects.[132]
Thus, as in the case of the French Revolution, ”whose first movers,” von Hammer also observes, ”were the tools or leaders of secret societies,”
it was not mere theory but the method of enlisting numerous dupes and placing weapons in their hands that brought about the ”Terror” of the a.s.sa.s.sins six centuries before that of their spiritual descendants, the Jacobins of 1793.
Taking as his groundwork the organization of the Grand Lodge of Cairo, Hasan reduced the nine degrees to their original number of seven, but these now received a definite nomenclature, and included not only real initiates but active agents.
Descending downwards, the degrees of the a.s.sa.s.sins were thus as follows: first, the Grand Master, known as the Shaikh-al-Jabal or ”Old Man of the Mountain”--owing to the fact that the Order always possessed itself of castles in mountainous regions; second, the Dail Kebir or Grand Priors; third, the fully initiated Dais, religious nuncios and political emissaries; fourth, the Rafiqs or a.s.sociates, in training for the higher degrees; fifth, the Fadais or ”devoted,” who undertook to deliver the secret blow on which their superiors had decided; sixth, the Lasiqus, or law brothers; and lastly the ”common people,” who were to be simply blind instruments. If the equivalents to the words ”Dai,” ”Rafiqs,” and ”Fadais” given by von Hammer and Dr. Bussell as ”Master Masons,” ”Fellow Crafts,” and ”Entered Apprentices” are accepted, an interesting a.n.a.logy with the degrees of Freemasonry is provided.