Forbidden History - The Order of Assassins: Secret Societies

Episode Date: November 26, 2024

The Assassins were one of the most deadly, notorious and secretive groups in the Medieval world. But is the romance behind these brutally efficient killers true? And have their skills and tactics been passed down and copied by today's terrorists? Cast List: Andrew Gough: Writer, presenter and editor of The Heretic Magazine  James Waterson: Author: The Ismaili Assassins  Alice Von Kannon: Author & Historian  Dr. Farhad Daftary: The Institute of Ismaili Studies  Brian Michael Jenkins: US Government Advisor on Terrorism  Adbel Razaq Abu Muhaisen: Knife Maker  Eric Meyers: Narrator Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Forbidden History Podcast. This program is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It contains mature adult themes. Listener discretion is advised. The Order of the Assassins was one of the most deadly, notorious, and elusive groups in the medieval world. Legend has it that they were a highly trained group of ruthless killers who used ninja-like skills and stealth to silently kill political leaders across the globe. Their assassination of Persian leader Nizram al-Muk in the 11th century shocked the Muslim world. These Mali assassins are, without doubt, the most formidable secret society that's ever existed.

With one political killing, they tore down an entire empire. These young men were skillfully trained, and they were the elite of the elite. They were the Navy SEALs and Marines of their day, an organization of stealth. political assassins who take out the head of an organization that creates a schism and causes the whole thing to crumble from the top. In this episode, we investigate these brutally efficient killers, analyze their methods and tactics, and reveal how and why they were so feared across the Middle East. The whole approach of the assassins, I mean, it was replicated grandmaster by grandmaster

for a few hundred years. They had tremendous success. In fact, their reputation and successes just continued to grow. This was the elevation of political murder to the level of strategy. To eliminate an individual who in fact was an important foe was intended to inspire fear among all others. These ismaelie assassins were a formidable force. They were feared by the crusaders, They destroyed a Persian Empire, and it required the superpower of the medieval age, the Mongols, to finally extinguish their threat. And we look at how their skills and tactics have been passed down and copied by today's Islamic terrorists. The acts may be very, very different. We're talking about targeted political assassination on one point.

We're talking about indiscriminate bombing in many cases on the other side. The end is terror. One could say that today's assassins are equally as effective as the order of assassins. They're taking out more people, but because of the media, they're having the same impact. They're distilling fear in a nation instantly, but they're having the same effect. Psychological fear is the worst kind of warfare. Back in the 11th century, Hassan Isaba was the founder and leader of a mystical Muslim sect, which was based in the lands which are now modern-day Syria and Iran. They were called Nazari Ismailis, but also known as the Hashashin by their enemies.

Today we know them as the Order of the Assassins, a highly trained group of expert killers who carried out dozens of high-profile assassinations across the Middle East. Primarily, they targeted leaders of rival Muslim sects, who they saw as not as devout as themselves, or who had transgressed from the strict observance of their faith. Dishmali assassins really came to be due to that inspiration of one man, Hassan Isaba. And this is a guy who has traveled all over Persia. He's come from Cairo, and now he's trying to find a place to really create an order.

His motivation is going to be revenge for his Shia devout. devout faith. He lived as he claimed to believe that he had no particular interest in the acquisition of political power or wealth or the conquest of vast kingdoms. There are reports that he in fact never even left his house for decades while he studied and elaborated the doctrine of the assassins. Hassanah is Sabah had a diamond hardness about him. This is a man who's used to living hard, to trusting very few people, to use to the concept

of safe houses and knowing those people who he could trust, and also therefore knowing that those would be the people who were highly indoctrinated in the same religious faith as him. An internal toughness bought of being a fugitive for much of his young life, but also has a hard, hard, hard, intellectual edge. And I think what comes through in the writings again and again is that he has a strategy and a vision that looks beyond so many of the people who are in the political sphere at the same time. He isn't a military commander.

He isn't the ruler of a great empire. He essentially starts out as a preacher. He's a teacher. But he is charismatic and he has this ability to attract people to him. people to him and to inspire their loyalty. He uses religion in a sense to bring them on board to his group. Hassan set up a training facility for the assassins at Alamut Castle in today's northern Iran.

They used ancient drugs, meditation techniques, and the promise of an afterlife in paradise to create an elite and loyal band of killers with complete disregard for their own lives. Hassan's a really sharp man. He realizes he doesn't have a huge army. It's not his intention anyway. He wants to be an organization of stealth political assassins who take out the head of an organization that creates a schism and causes the whole thing to crumble from the top.

Clearly this force would have been regarded as a special, an elite, you know, a special, an elite, unit or an elite group. That is people who had not only the devotion but sufficient intelligence to carry out these missions. So it would have been a recruiting process not vastly different from, say, recruiting from spies in the modern age or recruiting the kind of people who were dropped into occupied Germany during World War II, that they had the knowledge of some other part of the world, or language skills, or the capability to get on by themselves. It's the prototype for James Bond.

You're not going to go in there with a big, loud, marching army. You're going to go in there very subtly and become trusted, or at least not seen. And then, when the time is right, you're going to make your move. There is no doubt that the assassins themselves within the Ismaili structure were an elite. These were not cannon fodder. These were people who underwent specific and specialist training. These were people who had reached a very high level in terms of their theology as well and in their understanding of the Ismaili creed.

These were people who were identified within the organization with specific uniforms when when they were on guard duty for the Grand Master. Of course, when they were on active duty for assassination, their task was to blend in. The assassins were highly skilled killers. They were trained to have the ability and skills to disguise themselves and blend in seamlessly in public, making them lethally effective and almost impossible to detect. Surviving a mission was considered a deep dishonor, and it said that families rejoiced when they heard their assassin sons had died, having completed their deadly acts.

The myth of the assassins grows out of their spectacular killings. The fact that they suddenly appear out of the crowd, have not been seen, have not been identified, make the killing and then wait to be killed by the guards of their target. When they were doing an assassination, they like to do it in the broad light of day, in a very public place, preferably a mosque or a church. It was intended to inspire fear among all others. It was a deterrent strategy. That is, if you come after us, the Ismailis,

that will be a death sentence upon you. The assassins didn't have a country of their own, so they took over castles and fortresses in strategic positions across what is today's Syria, Iran, Iraq, and Jordan, creating a formidable defensive arc in the region. Historian James Waterson takes us on an audio tour of one of their ruined sites near Amman in Jordan. I mean, a castle's strength only becomes important if you really want to batter your way

into it. But for the Ismailis, you know, a wall as thick as this, it really didn't matter, because when they obtained their castles, they obtained them through subterfuge. They sneaked their way in, so to speak. The method that Hassan chooses to get Alamut in modern day Iran, ancient day Persia, is quite indicative of the strategy he would use in his order of assassins, and that is he kind of infiltrates the local community. And then he makes a proposition to the owner of the castle,

saying, I will give you a large sum of money, but you need to get out or else. This was an offer that could not be turned down, because when he looked around, he found that there were Ismaili communities hopping up all around him. Essentially, it had become a colony of the creed and the owner of the castle,

well, you may as well up and sell, because they're coming for it anyway. Hassan was a brilliant tactician. He very slowly set up. He would go to the highest mountain, the higher the better. the more inaccessible the better, because what he was trying to hold off

was an army thousand times of what he could ever raise. And so he was using every tactic in the book to try to hang on. And what he ended up building was a series, maybe a dozen of what we know, in that same arc, that same Shia ark that exists today,

from the northwest of Iran, across Iraq and into northern Syria. The Nazare's Ismaili assassins would always have looked for a castle that was on a high natural peak because you've got every advantage of being so much higher than your enemy. That's what it's all about. It's not just the build of the castle, it's also the fact that this natural environment puts you up high, it's on solid rock, so they can't dig underneath the walls to make them collapse. It's really difficult for them to launch missiles up at you, arrows, etc., but also you're looking down upon You can see your enemy, you can see exactly what he's doing.

We look at the evolution of the assassin's tactics, from taking over strategic strongholds to perfecting the art of assassination, and the devastating effect they had on the history of the Middle East, their use of sacred knives to kill their victims, and the stealthy attack on a corrupt Sultan. Back in the 11th century, Hassan Isaba was the founder and leader of a mystical Muslim sense mystical Muslim sect, which was based in the lands that are now modern-day Syria and Iran.

They were called Nazari Ismailis, but also known as the Hashashin by their enemies. Today we know them as the Order of the Assassins, a highly trained group of expert killers who carried out dozens of high-profile assassinations across the Middle East. Primarily, they targeted leaders of rival Muslim sects, who they saw saw as not as devout as themselves, or who had transgressed from the strict observance of their faith. Dr. Farhad Doftari is head of research at the Institute for Ismaili Studies in London, and is one of the world's leading experts on the group. The Ismaili did go on assassinations, on targeted assassinations, to remove the key military enemies of the community because they could not raised and mobilize large armies, as was the case with their opponents.

And it was the name, the name Hashishi, which gave rise to the legend, which has it that they used hashish as part of their indoctrination and training. So Hassan is really quite brilliant in his strategy. He recruits young men in their early teens, and they come into the castle, and they see, you know, wealth and just the coolness. of the order that exceeds anything they've ever known. But then he plays on their psychological desire to have a comfortable life with Allah in the afterlife.

And what he does is he drugs them with the drink. They pass out, and he physically takes them, takes their bodies to a garden that is literally paradise on Earth. And it was a beautiful place. It was literally a land of milk and honey. It was heaven is to see. Heaven is described by Muhammad. It was filled with beautiful women who gave you whatever you asked for.

Wine was given them. They spent the night in that pleasure garden. They awoke the next morning lying in front of the sheik of the mountain, the old man of the mountain. And this is when he tells him, if you would like to return to that state of ecstasy for eternity, then this is what you have to do. Can you imagine the impact? the impact that this would have had on a young man. They probably have just had their first

experience with women. They've just experienced something beyond their wildest dreams, and now they know they can have that again. And they've been shown this by a man who they respect anyways. He's pious. He's devout. He has the same faith that they do. So these guys will now do literally anything. They will gladly give up their life for the order. The assassin's reputation for deception and swift kills spread like wildfire through the 12th century. They were highly trained to use both their reflexes and assassination skills to complete their missions using a specific weapon, a curved knife with a poison blade. Professor James Waterson has spent much of his academic life investigating and researching

the lives of the assassins. He confirms they were expert knife handlers who are trained to strike for the life. fast with extreme stealth. The Ismaili assassin's choice of weapon obviously was the dagger, and the dagger holds a number of advantages for them. They're going to get close to their victim anyway, because they don't care about surviving the attack. Also, with a dagger, you can confirm the kill.

Sure, it's going to be safer using a sword to be at arm's length. But with a dagger, this is the way that you finish people off and kill them on the battlefield as well. And of course, a dagger's going to be easy to conceal. Our assassins are disguised. They're disguised as holy men. They're disguised as ambassadors. They're disguised as bodyguards of the sultans that they're actually going to dispatch and murder. Knives are still highly prized items in the Middle East. Abd al-Razak Abu Mujaisen is a third-generation knife maker based in Amman, Jordan.

My family makes a knife since five generation, since my great-grandfather, learned how to make a knife. Well, yes, to make a good knife, you should choose the good steel. It should be solid, flexible, you know, not too heavy. Well, the best knife for Hashashin to kill is the double-edged sharp knife or dagger. The dagger that Nizmali assassin would have used is a double-edged blade. That means that you can stab down into the victim between if he's wearing a chain-mail coiff that covers the neck and head and then an armoured breastplate you can get in between that with the double edge blade and stab downwards but also of course you can

slash as well it could be that you've got to fight your way into your victim we know that when they were attempting to kill the Sultan Saladin they had to fight past several bodyguards to get into the room to kill him that would have been a slashing motions to clear the way and then the stab down so double-edged very strong blade and we know that the steel made in the Islamic world at this time is a high intensity strong steel, carbon steel blade, and again an ability to slash and also to stab down too. According to early written sources, the first of many political murders by the sect took place in 1092. An assassin, disguised as a holy man, approached Nizam Al-Mulk, a local leader

as it was being transported in a carriage by his guards. Without fear of the repercussions and before the guards could act in defense, the assassin. fatally stabbed Nizam in the chest. This point the assassin just stands absolutely stock-still. He doesn't care about the fact that the guards are closing on him and they're going to kill him. He's completed his mission and in fact his sacrifice being killed by the guards is part of that blood right that's so important to the assassin modus operando.

For somebody sent out from the assassins to do a killing, should he survive it, that was shameful. If he survived it, it was often because he had failed. It was probably because he was caught. With the assassins, we have all those elements of a secret society. They are clear-minded about the mission. They spent months, long periods of time getting close to their victims, and then at that point, seizing the moment to carry out the murder.

If we have assassin sleeper cells that are waiting for the order from the Grand Master to actually undertake a political killing at the right time and at an appropriate juncture, then how do you get those messages to those sleeper cells and how do you keep sleeper cells safe? This is through the lay followers of the faith. Merchants we know were very commonly Ismailis and of course merchants enjoy free passage throughout the Islamic Empire. Also the movement of money in the Islamic Empire. was relatively simple and straightforward. Our word check is an invention of the Islamic word sac.

It means I could draw money in a bank in Alexandria, even if the bank is somewhere in Western Persia. So these are the underpinning structures through which the assassin can move relatively freely to get safety, then to get close to his target, and then for the grandmasters to send that message so that not only is the killing going to take place, going to take place, but it's going to take place at the right strategic moment for the Grandmaster.

The message they were trying to leave was, you're not safe. You think you're safe. Because in those days, they had the same philosophy that infested the Middle Ages all the way through, that they were higher, they were surrounded by their own personal bodyguard and their personal troops, and the message they were in it was, it doesn't matter if we want to kill you, you're dead. The assassins operated as small one or two-man-team. teams who struck without warning and often without detection. One of their most infamous encounters was a deadly threat that was sent to the Turkish Sultan Saladin, the ruler of Egypt at the end of the 12th century.

But rather than killing him, they relied on psychological intimidation. These guys are now the world's elite political assassins. And a great example of that is when they chose not to kill but to incite fear. The Ismaili assassins, this time in Syria they had a grandmaster called Sinar. He knew that even if he killed Saladin, there would be a replacement. One of his brothers would replace him, Saifadin for example, or one of his sons or even one of his nephews, and that they would still face a formidable foe. So what he attempted to do, the Grand Master in Syria, was to bring Saladin to a point of negotiation.

And he did this through psychological terror. This incredibly powerful man Saladin, while he was laying siege to a Syrian city, very close to where the assassins were in the West, he awoke one morning, rolled over and found, to his horror, an assassin dagger in the sand next to him. In waking up beside a dagger implanted in the earth beside his bed with a short note saying that we already hold you. We can take you at any time. Imagine the fear.

How could they possibly have penetrated our security? How did that happen? They must be everywhere. The psychological fear totally changed the Sultan's behavior and policy. Result achieved. Nobody had to die. But he got exactly what he wanted, the Grandmaster did. As news spread across the Muslim world of their killings

and more importantly, their tactics of intimidation, the legend of the assassins was slowly born. Within the space of just a few years, they became the most feared military group in the world. Even at the height of its powers, the Ismaili sect would have had very few Fidain assassin operatives in the field. But what is important is the psychological impact of these spectacular killings,

The fact that they suddenly appear out of the crowd have not been seen, have not been identified, make the killing and then wait to be killed by the guards of their target. There is also an important part of this. Few of the killings in Syria take place in the courtyard of the grand mosques. These are the most public places. The crowd will spread these tales throughout Syria. It's obvious in that respect. But what also happens is there becomes a myth of the Ismaili assassin. They start to acquire in these stories supernatural powers.

There's a story of the grandmaster of Syria who was known as cultivating these stories as well. That he could turn into a gigantic glowworm, that he could levitate or if he could float around the castle, etc. that he could metamorphose into a snake, that he could have conversations with horses, that he understood the secret language of animals. And they lived on a potent reputation of being sorcerers, terrifying men with terrifying secrets and terrifying powers

that inspired detestation amongst the Sunnis especially and fear. Amongst the Franks, everyone was afraid of them. They were oppressed a lot, so a lot of the motivation of the order appeared to be taken out political leaders who opposed their view of the world. Paranoia is a perfect word to describe the disorder and the chaos that occurred inside an Islamic royal court once an assassination had taken place. There was deep distrust of people that you worked with.

People were looking over their shoulders at all times. There are stories of individuals wearing armor at all times of the day and night to avoid assassination. Such was the fear of the blade of the Ismailis. There were not thousands of assassinations. There were not hundreds of assassinations. By the best count that we have during the decades that the original leader commanded the assassins, there were 50 assassinations, a small number. And yet with those 50 targeted killings,

this group was able to create this legend, this fear. So the aggressive nature of the assassin warriors was actually a defensive posture. By taking out political leaders, they were preserving their religious turf as it were. The Ismailis and the leader of the Ismailis, his primary objective was not to go out and kill people. His primary objective was to awaken people, to call them to this belief system.

The use of the assassins was a necessity to defend the followers. It wasn't the objective. To add to their mythological status and legend, the assassins founder and grandmaster Hassan Isaba also had a favorite, if rather gruesome, party trick, which he would play on his followers. They would call together the faithful,

and he would bury a man in a hole, very near, where he sat and all you would see is the man's head and a plate closed on either side of his head. And he would have the man talk and he would say, you see this man is dead, it's only his head, he's talking to you, the dead is talking to you, and he would tell all the faithful, get out, and go away and once they did, he'd pull the poor guy out and cut his head off and carry his head out, you know, I mean nobody questioned, nobody questioned at that point that the man had been dead the whole time, but he could make the dead talk. From mystical ceremonies and talking heads in the sand in the 11th century

to the secrets and skills of assassination and mass bomb plots that have been copied and used by modern-day terrorists coming up when forbidden history returns. The assassins were a legendary group of highly trained killers that operated across the Middle East in the 12th century. Their mysterious leader was Hassan, Iran Isaba, who ran a mystical sect which was based in the lands which are now modern-day Syria and Iran. They were a highly trained group of expert assassins, whose reputation spread across most

of the world and down through the centuries, influencing many of the Islamic extremists today. Although the assassins had essentially died out by the end of the 13th century, experts can see lots of similarities between them and Mawks. modern-day terrorist groups. Brian Michael Jenkins is an expert on terrorism and has briefed both the Pentagon and the White House on the subject. There are a number of parallels between the assassins and contemporary terrorism.

For one thing, those who commonly resort to terrorist tactics lack power in the conventional sense, and therefore they have to to adopt tactics and strategies that do not try to match the military superiority of their foes, but instead take advantage of their own capabilities. Instead of full frontal assaults, open battle, they're going to operate by means of treachery. I think it comes down to that key word of terror. The acts may be very, very different. We're talking about targeted political assassination on one point.

We're talking about indiscriminate bombing in many cases on the other side. But the end is terror. The Ismailis managed to produce that terror by the skill of their operations, but also the fact that there was a psychological component by the paranoia that this sowed amongst the royal courts, the feeling that there could be an Ismaili assassin. amongst one's bodyguard, amongst one's family, amongst one's close confidance. Modern day terror, I suggest, does that by the mass effect. It does that by the sheer size of its body count,

and the fact that we feel vulnerable as a society rather than as the individuals at the top of the society. The Ismailis worked at the top of the pyramid of power, and that's where they sowed the seeds of paranoia, that's where they sowed the seeds of doubt, and that's how they brought states to negotiating table, and that's how they managed to survive. The terrorists of today, or the assassins of their time,

manipulated perceptions. They created fear and alarm, which caused people to exaggerate their strength. The way an assassin approached his target was very much different to a modern terrorist, but unfortunately a lot of people don't see that. And I'm not saying only Westerners have been taken in by this myth. It is entirely possible that an ISIS lone wolf assassin

might be inspired by the assassins. That doesn't make it any more true. The assassins covered the same territory, that same axis of land from the north of Iran to the north of Syria, with the same faith. They didn't operate like a modern terrorist. The assassins were... Brilliant.

A modern terrorist doesn't seem to care who they kill, and we're not just talking about 9-11, talking about the Sunnis attacking the Shias on their holiest day of Ashura with car bombs. They don't care women, children, innocent people. They don't care how many they kill. They don't care. Whereas the assassins operated with surgical precision to go after the one enemy with the realization with the realization and the understanding that the men who followed him were only followers.

But if you can terrify or kill or take out, that one man, that is the greatest weapon you can put in the hands of a force that is overwhelmed numerically and overwhelmed in weapons and in money. It's a very clever tactic and almost a humane one in some place. Assassination is part of the tactical repertoire of today's terrorists. They blew up the Prime Minister of Spain.

They kill Ward Mountbatten in England. They attempted to kill the Prime Minister. There were plots against the royal family in the United Kingdom. If you look at the history of the United States, admittedly a country with a violent history, 12 of our 13 most recent presidents over the last 80 years. One was killed by an assassin. Several were shot at by assassins.

And all but one, 12 of the 13, have been the targets of assassination plots. One could say that today's assassins are equally as effective as the order of assassins? They're taking out more people. But because of the media, they're having the same impact. They're distilling fear in a nation instantly.

And they're not doing it by word of mouth, they're doing it by media. And that's the difference. But they're having the same effect. Psychological fear is the worst kind of warfare. You see a small number of spectacular murders. being exaggerated and creating this, again, atmosphere of fear and alarm. We have many people today in the United States and in Europe,

for whom fear of terrorism is a real component of their lives. Many people fear the so-called fifth columns or sleepers. That is terrorists who have all... already infiltrated the country and are waiting some signal to carry out attacks. That was true in the time of the assassins. You have no way of counting those you don't know about. If in response to terrorism, we become terrified as these medieval princes were terrified of assassins, then we're going to create a neo-medieval society and live in fear behind

perimeters, physical and electronic ones. That's the danger. But as all-powerful, as their legend and reputation was, the order of the assassins made a fatal miscalculation in the 13th century. They sent a large contingent of men to assassinate Manka Khan, the leader of the Mongol. and grandson of the infamous Genghis Khan, who was threatening to invade the Middle East. It was a grand plan which went spectacularly wrong. In the end, in revenge, the Mongols hunted down and wiped out the order of the assassins,

killing its leader and destroying its castles. The Ismaili assassins came within a head's breadth of destroying the superpower of the medieval age. 400 assassins were sent to assassinate the great Khan of the Mongol Empire. If they had succeeded, the history of the world today would look significantly different. The assassins, the entire order, led by the Grandmaster, were always very politically astute, and they knew that times of political unrest is the time when they would be most successful. But now they were facing enemies who had a hierarchy. If you kill the top guy, a new guy moves in.

So there's no delay, there's no disruption, there's no falling down from the top anymore. They realize the Mongols are going to be the formidable enemy that would probably end their existence. And they realize they have one shot to go in and take out the top members of the Mongol army. There is a story of the Ismaili assassin, the penultimate grandmaster, sending 40, or some sources even say 400 assassins all the way to Karakoram to the Mongol capital to attempt to kill the grand calm. But they fail, and the Mongols are so enraged and so indignant that the assassination was even attempted. They say, okay, now you're in trouble. now we're coming after you. The Mongols were prepared to step themselves into a level of horror, terror, and blood

that no other power before had even contemplated. And it was an annihilation. It turned into a genocide, and it very quickly marked the end of the order of assassins. They led a reign of terror and fear across much of the Middle East for well over two centuries, But their plan to kill the Mongol leader would turn out to be their last significant act. In the end, the order was all but wiped out by Manka Khan in the mid-13th century. These Mailei assassins are without doubt the most formidable secret society that's ever existed. With one political killing, they tore down an entire empire.

The whole approach of the assassins, I mean, it was replicated grandmaster by grandmaster. for a few hundred years. They had tremendous success. In fact, their reputation and successes just continued to grow. These Ismaili assassins were a formidable force for nearly two centuries. They were feared by the Crusaders. They destroyed a Persian Empire, and it required the superpower of the medieval age, the Mongols, to finally extinguish their threat.

What the assassin succeeded in doing was branding political murder. They gave their name to a tactic which has survived the organization itself. When we talk about assassination today, what we're talking about is a strategy devised by an old man in a remote fortress in Persia a thousand years ago. The Order of the Assassins was a group of highly trained, highly stealthy, expert killers. that carried out a series of high-profile killings across the Middle East in the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries. Their legends spread fast, and they were feared across the entire region on account of their training, tactics, and absolute dedication to their deadly missions.

Although they were eventually wiped out by the Mongols, their dark legacy lives on.