Part 4 (2/2)
The policy of the society underwent no alteration on the accession of Mohammed. The dagger still smote its enemies, and as each victim fell, the people who maintained the rights of Ismal, and who were kept in rigid obedience to the positive precepts of the Koran, beheld nothing but the right hand of Heaven made bare for the punishment of crime and usurpation. The new mountain prince had hardly taken the reins of government into his hands when Rasheed, the successor of the late khalif, eager to avenge the murder of his father, a.s.sembled an army and marched against Alamoot. He had reached Isfahan, but there his march terminated. Four a.s.sa.s.sins, who had entered his service for the purpose, fell upon him in his tent and stabbed him. When the news was conveyed to Alamoot great rejoicings were made, and for seven days and seven nights the trumpets and kettle-drums resounded from the towers of the fortress, proclaiming the triumph of the dagger to the surrounding country.
The Syrian dominion of the Ismalites was at this time considerably extended. They purchased from Ibn Amroo, their owner, the castles of Cadmos and Kahaf, and took by force that of Ma.s.syat from the lords of Sheiser. This castle, which was situated on the west side of Mount Legam, opposite Antaradus, became henceforth the chief seat of Ismalite power in Syria. The society had now a line of coast to the north of Tripolis, and their possessions extended inland to the verge of the Hauran.
The reign of Mohammed presents few events to ill.u.s.trate the history of the a.s.sa.s.sins. It was probably in his time that the following confession of the Ismalite faith was made to the persons whom Sultan Sanjar sent to Alamoot to inquire into it[45]:
[Footnote 45: As Sanjar lived to a great age he was contemporary with several of the Ismalite sheikhs.]
”This is our doctrine,” said the heads of the society. ”We believe in the unity of G.o.d, and acknowledge as the true wisdom and right creed only that which accords with the word of G.o.d and the commands of the Prophet. We hold these as they are delivered in the holy writ, the Koran, and believe in all that the Prophet has taught of the creation, and the last things, of rewards and punishments, of the last judgment, and the resurrection. To believe this is necessary, and no one is authorized to judge of the commands of G.o.d for himself, or to alter a single letter in them. These are the fundamental doctrines of our sect, and if the sultan does not approve of them, let him send hither one of his learned divines, that we may argue the matter with him.”
To this creed no orthodox Mussulman could well make any objection. The only question was, what was the Ismalite system of interpretation, and what other doctrines did they deduce from the sacred text; and the active employment of the dagger of the Fedavee suggested in tolerably plain terms that there were others, and that something not very compatible with the peace and order of society lay behind the veil.
Indeed the circ.u.mstance of the Ismalite chiefs professing themselves to be only the ministers and representatives of the invisible imam was in itself highly suspicious; for what was to prevent their enjoining any atrocity which might be for their interest, in the name of their viewless master? They are ignorant indeed of human nature who suppose that a prompt obedience would not be yielded to all such commands by the ignorant and bigoted members of the sect.
The ill leaven of the secret doctrine displayed itself before very long.
Keah Mohammed, who appears to have been a weak, inefficient man, was held in little esteem by his followers. They began to attach themselves to his son Ha.s.san, who had the reputation of being a man of prodigious knowledge, learned in tradition and the text of the Koran, versed in exposition, and well acquainted with the sciences. Ha.s.san, either through vanity or policy, began secretly to disseminate the notion of his being himself the imam whose appearance had been promised by Ha.s.san Ben Sabah. Filled with this idea, the more instructed members of the society vied with each other in eagerness to fulfil his commands, and Keah Mohammed, seeing his power gradually slipping from him, was at length roused to energy. a.s.sembling the people, he reprobated in strong terms the prevailing heresy. ”Ha.s.san,” said he, ”is my son, and I am not the imam, but only one of his missionaries. Whoever maintains the contrary is an infidel.” Then, in true a.s.sa.s.sin fas.h.i.+on, he gave effect to his words by executing 250 of his son's adherents, and banis.h.i.+ng an equal number from the fortress. Ha.s.san himself, in order to save his life, was obliged publicly to curse those who held the new opinions, and to write dissertations condemning their tenets, and defending those of his father. By these means he succeeded in removing suspicion from the mind of the old chief; but, as he continued to drink wine in private, and violated several of the other positive precepts of the law, his adherents became only the more convinced of his being the imam, at whose coming all the precepts of the law were to cease to be of any force.
Ha.s.san was obliged to be cautious and conceal his opinions during the lifetime of his father; for, whatever their opinion might be of the capacity and intellectual power of the head of their sect, the a.s.sa.s.sins believed themselves to be bound to obey his orders, as proceeding from the visible representative of the sacred invisible imam; and, high as their veneration for Ha.s.san was, his blood would have flowed on the ground the instant an order to that effect had pa.s.sed the lips of his father. But no sooner was Keah Mohammed dead, after a reign of twenty-four years, and the supreme station was come to Ha.s.san himself, than he resolved to fling away the mask at once, and not only to trample on the law himself, but to authorize and encourage all his people to do the same.
Accordingly, when the month Ramazan (the Mohammedan Lent) of the 559th year of the Hejra (A.D. 1163) was come, he ordered all the inhabitants of Roodbar to a.s.semble on the place of prayer (_Mosella_), or esplanade, before the castle of Alamoot. Facing the direction of the Keblah[46] he caused a pulpit to be erected, at whose four corners were displayed banners of the different hues familiar to Islam, namely, a white, a red, a yellow, a green, colours adverse to the black of the Abba.s.sides.
[Footnote 46: That is, the point towards which they turn in prayer, namely, Mecca.]
On the 17th day of the month the people, in obedience to his commands, appeared in great numbers beneath the walls of the fortress. After a little time Ha.s.san came forth and ascended the pulpit. All voices were hushed; expectation waited on the words of the Sheikh-al-Jebal. He commenced his discourse by perplexing the minds of his auditors by enigmatical and obscure sentences. When he had thus deluded them for some time, he informed them that an envoy of the imam (that is, the phantom of a khalif who was still sitting on the throne at Cairo) had arrived, and had brought him a letter addressed to all Ismalites, whereby the fundamental tenets of the sect were renewed and confirmed.
He proceeded to a.s.sure them that, by this letter, the gates of mercy and compa.s.sion had been opened for all who would follow and obey him; that they were the true elect; that they were freed from all obligations of the law, and delivered from the burden of all commands and prohibitions; that he had now conducted them to the day of the resurrection, that is, of the revelation of the imam. He then commenced in Arabic the Khootbeh, or public prayer, which he said he had received from the imam; and an interpreter, who stood at the foot of the pulpit, translated it for them to the following effect:--
”Ha.s.san, the son of Mohammed, the son of Buzoorg Oomeid, is our khalif (_successor_), dai, and hoojet (_proof_). All who follow our doctrine must hearken to him in affairs of faith and of the world, and regard his commands as imperative, his words as impressive. They must not transgress his prohibitions, and they must regard his commands as ours.
They should know that our lord has had compa.s.sion upon them, and has conducted them to the most high G.o.d.”
When this proclamation was made known Ha.s.san came down from the pulpit, directed tables to be spread, and commanded the people to break the fast, and to give themselves up, as on festival days, to all kinds of enjoyment, with music, and various games and sports. ”For this,” cried he, ”this is the day of the resurrection;” that is, according to the Ismalite mode of interpreting the Koran, the day of the manifestation of the imam.
What the orthodox had before only suspected was now confirmed. It was now manifest, beyond doubt, that the Ismalites were heretics who trampled under foot all the most plain and positive precepts of Islam; for, though they might pretend to justify their practice by their allegorical system of interpretation, it was clearly repugnant to common sense, and might be made the instrument of sanctioning, under the name of religion, every species of enormity. From this time the term Moolahid (_impious_) began to become the common and familiar appellation of the Ismalites in the mouths of the orthodox Moslems. As to the Ismalites themselves, they rejoiced in what they had done; they exalted like emanc.i.p.ated bondsmen in the liberty which they had acquired; and they even commenced a new era from the 17th (or, according to some authorities, the 7th) Ramazan of the 559th year, namely, the day of the manifestation of the imam. To the name of Ha.s.san they henceforth affixed the formula ”_On his memory be peace_;” which formula, it would appear, was employed by itself to designate him; for the historian Mirkhond a.s.sures us that he had been informed by a credible person that over the door of the library in Alamoot was the following inscription:--
”With the aid of G.o.d, the bonds Of the law he took away, The commander of the world, Upon whose name be peace.”
The madness of Ha.s.san now attained its climax. He disdained to be regarded, like his predecessors, as merely the representative of the imam on earth, but a.s.serted himself to be the true and real imam, who was now at length made manifest to the world. He sent letters to all the settlements of the society, requiring them to acknowledge him in his new capacity. He was prudent enough, however, to show a regard for the dignity and power of his different lieutenants in these letters, as appears by the following specimen, being the letter which was sent to Kuhistan, where the reis Mozaffar commanded:--
”I Ha.s.san say unto you that I am the representative of G.o.d upon earth, and mine in Kuhistan is the reis Mozaffar, whom the men of that country are to obey, and to receive his word as mine.”
The reis erected a pulpit in the castle of Moominabad, the place of his residence, and read the letter aloud to the people, the greater part of whom listened to its contents with joy. The tables were covered before the pulpit, the wine was brought forth, the drums and kettle-drums resounded, the notes of the pipe and flute inspired joy, and the day of the abolition of the positive precepts of the law was devoted to mirth and festivity. Some few, who were sincere and upright in their obedience to Islam, quitted the region which they now regarded as the abode of infidelity, and went in search of other abodes; others, of a less decided character, remained, though shocked at what they were obliged every day to behold. The obedience to the commands of the _soi-disant_ imam was, however, tolerably general, and, according to Hammer, who can scarcely, however, be supposed to regard the system of Ha.s.san as really more licentious than he has elsewhere described that of Mahomet, ”the banner of the freest infidelity, and of the most shameless immorality, now waved on all the castles of Roodbar and Kuhistan, as the standard of the new illumination; and, instead of the name of the Egyptian khalif, resounded from all the pulpits that of Ha.s.san as the true successor of the Prophet.”
The latter point had presented some difficulty to Ha.s.san; for, in order to satisfy the people on that head, it was necessary to prove a descent from the Prophet, and this was an honour to which it was well known the family from which he was sprung had never laid claim. He might take upon him to abolish the positive precepts of the law as he pleased, and the people, whose inclinations were thereby gratified, would not perhaps scan very narrowly the authority by which he acted; but the attempt to deprive the Fatimite khalif of the honour which he had so long enjoyed, and to a.s.sume the rank of G.o.d's viceregent on earth in his room, was likely to give too great a shock to their prejudices, if not cautiously managed.
It was necessary, therefore, that he should prove himself to be of the blood of the Fatimites. He accordingly began to drop some dark hints respecting the truth of the received opinion of his being the son of Keah Mohammed. Our readers will recollect that, when Ha.s.san Sabah was in Egypt, a dispute had taken place respecting the succession to the throne, in which Ha.s.san had nearly lost his life for opposing the powerful commander-in-chief (_Emir-al-Jooyoosh_), and Nezar, the prince for whom the khalif Mostanser had designed the succession, had been deprived of his right by the influence of that officer. The confidents of Ha.s.san now began to give out that, in about a year after the death of the khalif Mostanser, a certain person named Aboo-'l-Zeide, who had been high in his confidence, had come to Alamoot, bearing with him a son of Nezar, whom he committed to the care of Ha.s.san Sabah, who, grateful to the memory of the khalif and his son, had received the fugitive with great honour, and a.s.signed a village at the foot of Alamoot for the residence of the young imam. When the youth was grown up he married and had a son, whom he named _On his Memory be Peace_. Just at the time when the imam's wife was confined in the village, the consort of Keah Mohammed lay in at the castle; and, in order that the descendant of Fatima might come to the temporal power which was his right, a confidential woman undertook and succeeded in the task of secretly changing the children. Others went still further, and did not hesitate to a.s.sert that the young imam had intrigued with the wife of Keah Mohammed, and that Ha.s.san was the fruit of their adulterous intercourse.
Like a true pupil of ambition, Ha.s.san was willing to defame the memory of his mother, and acknowledge himself to be a b.a.s.t.a.r.d, provided he could succeed in persuading the people to believe him a descendant of the Prophet.
These pretensions of Ha.s.san to a Fatimite pedigree gave rise to a further increase of the endless sects into which the votaries of Islam were divided. Those who acknowledged it got the name of Nezori, and by them Ha.s.san was called the Lord of the Resurrection (_Kaim-al-Kiamet_), and they styled themselves the Sect of the Resurrection.
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