In the chaos of early twelfth-century Syria, few alliances were more perilous than the one between Aleppo’s ruler and the Assassins. Their arrival would turn a divided city into the centre of intrigue, conversion, and calculated violence.
By Steve Tibble
The rich, vibrant cities of Syria were tempting for the Assassins.
They had money and markets, power and people. Here, the Assassins’ leaders must have thought, lay, real possibilities for long-term religious and political stability. Aleppo was the clear target for the first Assassin leader in Syria – a man named al-Hakim but better known, somewhat esoterically, as the ‘doctor-astrologer’. Even in these early days, the Syrian Assassins had a knack for creating a suitably unusual reputational presence.
Geography was helpful – one of the many advantages of Aleppo as a base for the Assassins were that it was close to the Ismaili heartlands of the Jabal as-Summaq and the Jabal Bahra. Even more helpfully, although its Seljuk rulers may have been Sunni, much of the local population were Christian or Shi’ite by inclination — the former were generally disinterested in Muslim infighting, and the latter offered a clear path for conversion to the cause. The Sunni population might hold power but they were perhaps a minority in the city they ruled.
Aleppo and Ridwan – Creating a Base
17th-century depiction of Aleppo by Jacob Peeters – Wikimedia Commons
Just as helpfully, Ridwan, the Seljuk ruler of Aleppo from 1095-1113, seems to have been a man without strong religious convictions. Instead, he took far more interest in the all too tangible world of Turkic infighting.
Ridwan was ostensibly Sunni in his beliefs but, in practice, was theologically flexible. He had shown favour to the Shi’ite beliefs of the Fatimids in the early years of his reign and, as the ruler of a large non-Sunni population, maintained a high degree of religious tolerance. He may even have been a Nizari convert himself. But, if that was the case, he did not, for entirely understandable reasons, advertise the fact too openly.
Ridwan’s religious affiliations, or lack thereof, may also have been calculated. He was vying for position against a plethora of Seljuk competitors. And there were new Christian entrants, such as the crusaders, coming into the unforgivingly bloodthirsty world of regional power politics. He needed all the support he could get. Perhaps he saw the ferocious commitment of the Assassins as the basis for a military force that he could rely on. These were brutal times, and whatever feelings of spirituality Ridwan had, they almost certainly existed alongside a healthy dose of political expediency.
The Nizaris were certainly charismatic and persuasive. One chronicler wrote that the ‘doctor-astrologer’ had ‘persuaded Ridwan of the righteousness of the sect of the Assassins so that they were allowed to recruit in Aleppo and he declared himself to be their patron and protector…Ridwan, deaf to all the messages on this subject from other princes, never abandoned the beliefs of this sect.’ Prosaically, and indicating one of the ways in which the Assassins infiltrated Ridwan’s administration, it was said that if you wanted to ‘harm an enemy, you could always resort to them.’ Paid killers willing to work for the state were an attractive and enduring asset.
Whatever Ridwan’s private beliefs, the ‘doctor-astrologer’ was certainly a valued adviser and a very public member of his entourage. Nizari missionaries were allowed to preach openly in Aleppo and make as many new converts as they could. Ridwan even helped them build a new mission complex to accommodate the sect’s expanding following. The Assassins began to relax and, in the eyes of hostile Sunni commentators at least, to behave in a proprietorial and arrogant fashion.
These were heady times. Everything seemed possible. The Assassins had set up a highly successful base of operations at Aleppo. They began to influence Ridwan’s decisions in their own interests. It seemed that Aleppo was on the verge of becoming the capital of a new Nizari state in Syria. All that was needed now was an opportunity to show their Turkic sponsor just how valuable the Assassins’ support could be.
And that opportunity was not far away.
Testing Their Power: The First Mission in Syria
Romantic Illustration of Emesa, today’s Homs/Syria by the great artist Louis Francois Cassas [1756-1827 ] during his journey into the Ottoman Empire 1784-1786. The artist is shown sketching the famous citadel of Emesa, surrounded by his guards and the inquisitive locals.One of the first well-documented missions carried out by the fidais in Syria was against a warlord named Janah al-Daula.
Many modern books about the Assassins are written from a Eurocentric perspective. They focus on the high-profile attacks which were occasionally made against the crusaders and their leaders. The assassination attempts on the lives of Christian rulers need to be put into perspective, however – in reality, most Nizari attacks were aimed against their fellow Muslims.
This should not be surprising. The regional Muslim players were far bigger and more important than the crusader states. And the level of animosity was greater between them. The Christians may not have been fond of the Assassins, but they were generally disinterested in Muslim theology. They did not, unlike the Sunnis, have a visceral hatred of the Nizaris as ‘heretics’.
Ridwan, the ruler of Aleppo, was one of the first to spot the advantages of having the Assassins in your debt and in your entourage. He soon started to deploy his deadly new weapon against his enemies.
Janah al-Daula, the atabeg (or governor) of Homs, was one of his main opponents. He was nominally a vassal, but had proved in practice to be irritatingly independent. Not coincidentally, he was among the first to receive a visit from the fidais. The atabeg, habitually suspicious, took tight security precautions. One day, in May 1103, he left the citadel of Homs to go to the great mosque for Friday prayers. He was taking no chances, and made sure that he was ‘surrounded by his principal officers in full armour’.
It was a good effort – but not good enough. An Assassin hit squad, consisting of a team leader (‘a sheikh’) and three fidais, was waiting amongst the worshippers. When ‘the sheikh gave the signal they attacked the amir with their knives and killed both him and a number of his officers’. The fidai team was captured and killed on the spot, but that was not the end of the matter. Anyone who was nearby and looked like a foreigner was in danger. “‘There were,’ wrote the Damascene chronicler Ibn al-Qalanisi, ‘in the mosque at the time ten Sufis, Persians and others; they were suspected of complicity in the crime, and were straightaway executed in cold blood, every man of them, although they were innocent.’”
As a telling indication of the precarious position of the regime in Homs (and its relatively small numbers) the Turkic population fled upon news of Janah al-Daula’s death, and moved back to the safer environment of Damascus. Ridwan was absolutely correct in seeing the hit as an easy way of destabilising the entire government – to his immediate advantage.
He understood what it was to have the Assassins on your side.
Steve Tibble, an honorary research associate at Royal Holloway, University of London, has a new book out – Assassins and Templars: A Battle in Myth and Blood – from Yale University Press. It tells the true history behind the hugely popular video game Assassin’s Creed and the medieval world’s two most extraordinary organisations, tracing their origins, strategies, violent clashes, and enduring legacy in myth and memory.
You can get your copy of Assassins and Templars: A Battle in Myth and Blood through
In the chaos of early twelfth-century Syria, few alliances were more perilous than the one between Aleppo’s ruler and the Assassins. Their arrival would turn a divided city into the centre of intrigue, conversion, and calculated violence.
By Steve Tibble
The rich, vibrant cities of Syria were tempting for the Assassins.
They had money and markets, power and people. Here, the Assassins’ leaders must have thought, lay, real possibilities for long-term religious and political stability. Aleppo was the clear target for the first Assassin leader in Syria – a man named al-Hakim but better known, somewhat esoterically, as the ‘doctor-astrologer’. Even in these early days, the Syrian Assassins had a knack for creating a suitably unusual reputational presence.
Geography was helpful – one of the many advantages of Aleppo as a base for the Assassins were that it was close to the Ismaili heartlands of the Jabal as-Summaq and the Jabal Bahra. Even more helpfully, although its Seljuk rulers may have been Sunni, much of the local population were Christian or Shi’ite by inclination — the former were generally disinterested in Muslim infighting, and the latter offered a clear path for conversion to the cause. The Sunni population might hold power but they were perhaps a minority in the city they ruled.
Aleppo and Ridwan – Creating a Base
Just as helpfully, Ridwan, the Seljuk ruler of Aleppo from 1095-1113, seems to have been a man without strong religious convictions. Instead, he took far more interest in the all too tangible world of Turkic infighting.
Ridwan was ostensibly Sunni in his beliefs but, in practice, was theologically flexible. He had shown favour to the Shi’ite beliefs of the Fatimids in the early years of his reign and, as the ruler of a large non-Sunni population, maintained a high degree of religious tolerance. He may even have been a Nizari convert himself. But, if that was the case, he did not, for entirely understandable reasons, advertise the fact too openly.
Ridwan’s religious affiliations, or lack thereof, may also have been calculated. He was vying for position against a plethora of Seljuk competitors. And there were new Christian entrants, such as the crusaders, coming into the unforgivingly bloodthirsty world of regional power politics. He needed all the support he could get. Perhaps he saw the ferocious commitment of the Assassins as the basis for a military force that he could rely on. These were brutal times, and whatever feelings of spirituality Ridwan had, they almost certainly existed alongside a healthy dose of political expediency.
The Nizaris were certainly charismatic and persuasive. One chronicler wrote that the ‘doctor-astrologer’ had ‘persuaded Ridwan of the righteousness of the sect of the Assassins so that they were allowed to recruit in Aleppo and he declared himself to be their patron and protector…Ridwan, deaf to all the messages on this subject from other princes, never abandoned the beliefs of this sect.’ Prosaically, and indicating one of the ways in which the Assassins infiltrated Ridwan’s administration, it was said that if you wanted to ‘harm an enemy, you could always resort to them.’ Paid killers willing to work for the state were an attractive and enduring asset.
Whatever Ridwan’s private beliefs, the ‘doctor-astrologer’ was certainly a valued adviser and a very public member of his entourage. Nizari missionaries were allowed to preach openly in Aleppo and make as many new converts as they could. Ridwan even helped them build a new mission complex to accommodate the sect’s expanding following. The Assassins began to relax and, in the eyes of hostile Sunni commentators at least, to behave in a proprietorial and arrogant fashion.
These were heady times. Everything seemed possible. The Assassins had set up a highly successful base of operations at Aleppo. They began to influence Ridwan’s decisions in their own interests. It seemed that Aleppo was on the verge of becoming the capital of a new Nizari state in Syria. All that was needed now was an opportunity to show their Turkic sponsor just how valuable the Assassins’ support could be.
And that opportunity was not far away.
Testing Their Power: The First Mission in Syria
Many modern books about the Assassins are written from a Eurocentric perspective. They focus on the high-profile attacks which were occasionally made against the crusaders and their leaders. The assassination attempts on the lives of Christian rulers need to be put into perspective, however – in reality, most Nizari attacks were aimed against their fellow Muslims.
This should not be surprising. The regional Muslim players were far bigger and more important than the crusader states. And the level of animosity was greater between them. The Christians may not have been fond of the Assassins, but they were generally disinterested in Muslim theology. They did not, unlike the Sunnis, have a visceral hatred of the Nizaris as ‘heretics’.
Ridwan, the ruler of Aleppo, was one of the first to spot the advantages of having the Assassins in your debt and in your entourage. He soon started to deploy his deadly new weapon against his enemies.
Janah al-Daula, the atabeg (or governor) of Homs, was one of his main opponents. He was nominally a vassal, but had proved in practice to be irritatingly independent. Not coincidentally, he was among the first to receive a visit from the fidais. The atabeg, habitually suspicious, took tight security precautions. One day, in May 1103, he left the citadel of Homs to go to the great mosque for Friday prayers. He was taking no chances, and made sure that he was ‘surrounded by his principal officers in full armour’.
It was a good effort – but not good enough. An Assassin hit squad, consisting of a team leader (‘a sheikh’) and three fidais, was waiting amongst the worshippers. When ‘the sheikh gave the signal they attacked the amir with their knives and killed both him and a number of his officers’. The fidai team was captured and killed on the spot, but that was not the end of the matter. Anyone who was nearby and looked like a foreigner was in danger. “‘There were,’ wrote the Damascene chronicler Ibn al-Qalanisi, ‘in the mosque at the time ten Sufis, Persians and others; they were suspected of complicity in the crime, and were straightaway executed in cold blood, every man of them, although they were innocent.’”
As a telling indication of the precarious position of the regime in Homs (and its relatively small numbers) the Turkic population fled upon news of Janah al-Daula’s death, and moved back to the safer environment of Damascus. Ridwan was absolutely correct in seeing the hit as an easy way of destabilising the entire government – to his immediate advantage.
He understood what it was to have the Assassins on your side.
You can get your copy of Assassins and Templars: A Battle in Myth and Blood through
Yale University Press website
Amazon.com
Amazon.ca
Amazon.co.uk
To learn more about Steve, please visit his website or follow him on Instagram
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