A single dagger strike in a crowded mosque changed the course of Syrian politics. The assassination of Mawdud exposed the ruthless alliances and rivalries shaping the Muslim world during the Crusades.
By Steve Tibble
Ridwan, the Turkic ruler of Aleppo, had an uneasy relationship with the Assassins. It focused, for reasons of sound realpolitik, on their usefulness – he worked with them to further his own ambitions.
They were reliable troops – or, at the very least, they were more dependent on him than the rest of the population of Aleppo. Importantly, they provided him with military muscle as well as access to their own assassination teams.
Mawdud, the ruler of Mosul (1108–1113), was high on the ever-shifting list of Turkic rivals that Ridwan would like to see dead. Annoyingly from his perspective, Mawdud was an inspiring and effective general. He had been commissioned by the sultan of Baghdad to unite the local Turkic-run states in Syria, and to wage Holy War against the Crusaders. Mawdud had proved embarrassingly good at one part of his job – attacking the Franks.
But he found that getting the local Muslim warlords to act under his command was like herding cats. Both Ridwan of Aleppo and Tughtigin, the ruler of Damascus (r.1104–1128), were less than enthusiastic about giving up their freedom. They didn’t much like the Franks, but they liked being forced to ‘unite’ by outsiders even less.
Allies of Convenience: Ridwan and the Nizaris
Ridwan had used his Nizari auxiliaries against Mawdud and his irritatingly effective troops in the past. When an expedition was launched by Baghdad in 1111 to try to enforce Muslim unity against the Crusaders, he had refused to take part. Instead, he had used the Nizaris to shore up his position.
When his unwelcome Turkic ‘allies’ arrived, ‘they had expected that either…[Ridwan], lord of Aleppo, would himself come out to join them, or else his officers would join them by his command.’
Ceramic Fragment from 12th-century Syria – photo courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Ridwan had other ideas. He ‘shut the gates of Aleppo, took hostages from the townsmen into the citadel,’ an interesting indicator of his popularity among his own subjects, ‘and organised his troops, with the armed bands of the [Nizaris] and the loyal citizens, for garrison duty to guard the city wall and prevent the citizens from ascending it.’ He also set loose his men to ‘seize whomsoever they could from the fringes of the army’, in order to encourage Mawdud and his men to move on as quickly as possible. This was hardly the spirit of jihad that Baghdad had hoped for.
Like Ridwan, Tughtigin of Damascus was a long-standing supporter of the Assassins, and for much the same reasons. He too may have had some religious sympathies for their cause – but, more cynically (and probably more realistically), he helped them because he knew he could rely on them to do his dirty work.
So, however attractive the prospect of Muslim unity might look from the elevated perspective of Baghdad, the Assassins and their local patrons all had good reasons to prevent the creation of a centralised and orthodox Sunni Muslim state in Syria.
Mawdud would have to go. And the fidais were the men who could make that happen.
Murder in the Mosque: The Death of Mawdud
On 2 October, 1113, fresh from more victories against the Franks, Mawdud was a feted guest of Tughtigin in Damascus. Security was tight. As he left the Great Mosque he was surrounded by the best bodyguards that money could buy – his security team on the day were described as ‘Daylamites, Turks, Khurasanis, men-at-arms and armour-bearers, with weapons of all kinds, fine-tempered blades and keen thrusting swords, rapiers of various sorts and unsheathed daggers.’ The procession was so tightly surrounded that it was as if they were walking ‘in the midst of a tangled thicket of intertwined spikes’. Maximum measures for his protection were in place.
No amount of protection could guarantee your safety if the Assassins were determined to get to you, however. When Mawdud and his men ‘entered the court of the mosque’ wrote Ibn al-Qalanisi, ‘a man leapt out from among the crowd…approaching the emir Mawdud as though to call down a blessing upon him.’ But there were no blessings. Instead, he ‘seized the belt of his riding cloak with a swift motion and struck him twice with his dagger below the navel’. The thrust, calculated to ensure that the dagger entered Mawdud’s body under his armoured shirt, was all too effective.
The Umayyad mosque at Damascus. Illustration of a tale. Page from a manuscript known as Kitab al-bulhan or “Book of Wonders” held at the Bodelian Library MS. Bodl. Or. 133
The murderer did not survive the attack. Given the need to keep the identity of the man who commissioned the act secret, perhaps that was always the plan – ‘as the Assassin struck his second blow swords fell upon him from every side and he was struck with every kind of weapon’. The frustration of Mawdud’s guards was taken out on the corpse. Belatedly, the head of the Assassin was cut off and paraded round for identification purposes – but no one recognised him. What remained of his body was burnt.
Tughtigin was close to Mawdud during the attack but remained suspiciously unharmed – they were said to be ‘hand in hand’ when the Assassin struck. Tughtigin just carried on walking ahead. In a surreal but strangely plausible moment which spoke of the shock of the incident, the wounded Mawdud tried to act as if nothing had happened. Instead, he just struggled to keep up with his all-too nonchalant host.
Despite his wounds ‘Mawdud, controlling himself, walked on until he was close to the north gate of the mosque. There he collapsed’. Ibn al-Qalanisi, as a Damascene chronicler writing about the ruler of Damascus, claimed, highly implausibly, that Tughtigin was very upset by his death. Few others were so sure.
The Franks took a keen interest in the affair, as they had been increasingly worried by Mawdud’s military successes. The historian William of Tyre, writing later in the century, claimed that the attack ‘was not done without the knowledge and consent of [Tughtigin]. For rumour declared that [Tughtigin] distrusted the power of that leader and feared that he might deprive him of the kingdom’.
The contemporary chroniclers Fulcher of Chartres, a well-informed companion of the king of Jerusalem, and Albert of Aachen similarly suggested that Tughtigin was behind the plot, and that his ‘deception became common knowledge among the Turks’. Even King Baldwin I of Jerusalem, tough and blunt as ever, was said to have written to Tughtigin immediately after the murder. He pointedly commented that ‘a people that has killed its main prop on its holy day in its house of worship truly deserves that God should destroy it.’
Not everyone knew who to blame, however. The Syriac Orthodox chronicler, Gregory Bar Hebraeus, had his own version. The information he had was that ‘some people have thought that [Ridwan], the lord of Aleppo, sent the [Ismaili]. And others think that it was [Tughtigin] himself who incited the murderer…and that he promised him gifts to do this, because he was afraid for his city by reason of Mawdud.’
Ultimately, it could have been either or even both of them. Tughtigin was close at hand, and hence the prime suspect. Alternatively, Ridwan, who died a just a few weeks later, may have had a hand in it. But it is also conceivable that the Assassins, who were highly motivated to delay any form of Sunni Muslim unity, may have undertaken the act on their own – or, that they had approached either Ridwan or Tughtigin to offer their services for cash and favours. With so many enemies and just a mutilated corpse as evidence, no one really knew who to blame. And this deliberate air of uncertainty only added to the fear which the death created.
Either way, the assassination was extremely successful from the perspective of the local Turkic rulers (and incidentally, of course, the Crusaders). The caliph of Baghdad was forced to look elsewhere for a leader to pursue his jihadist offensive against the Franks. He chose an emir called al-Bursuqi (atabeg of Mosul, 1113–1126) as his new general. Al-Bursuqi, however, was a far weaker figure and no match for the wily local Turkic ruling families or the aggressive Franks.
The Assassins too must have been delighted at the continuing fragmentation of Sunni power – Mawdud’s death was a coup for the Nizaris in Syria.
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
A single dagger strike in a crowded mosque changed the course of Syrian politics. The assassination of Mawdud exposed the ruthless alliances and rivalries shaping the Muslim world during the Crusades.
By Steve Tibble
Ridwan, the Turkic ruler of Aleppo, had an uneasy relationship with the Assassins. It focused, for reasons of sound realpolitik, on their usefulness – he worked with them to further his own ambitions.
They were reliable troops – or, at the very least, they were more dependent on him than the rest of the population of Aleppo. Importantly, they provided him with military muscle as well as access to their own assassination teams.
Mawdud, the ruler of Mosul (1108–1113), was high on the ever-shifting list of Turkic rivals that Ridwan would like to see dead. Annoyingly from his perspective, Mawdud was an inspiring and effective general. He had been commissioned by the sultan of Baghdad to unite the local Turkic-run states in Syria, and to wage Holy War against the Crusaders. Mawdud had proved embarrassingly good at one part of his job – attacking the Franks.
But he found that getting the local Muslim warlords to act under his command was like herding cats. Both Ridwan of Aleppo and Tughtigin, the ruler of Damascus (r.1104–1128), were less than enthusiastic about giving up their freedom. They didn’t much like the Franks, but they liked being forced to ‘unite’ by outsiders even less.
Allies of Convenience: Ridwan and the Nizaris
Ridwan had used his Nizari auxiliaries against Mawdud and his irritatingly effective troops in the past. When an expedition was launched by Baghdad in 1111 to try to enforce Muslim unity against the Crusaders, he had refused to take part. Instead, he had used the Nizaris to shore up his position.
When his unwelcome Turkic ‘allies’ arrived, ‘they had expected that either…[Ridwan], lord of Aleppo, would himself come out to join them, or else his officers would join them by his command.’
Ridwan had other ideas. He ‘shut the gates of Aleppo, took hostages from the townsmen into the citadel,’ an interesting indicator of his popularity among his own subjects, ‘and organised his troops, with the armed bands of the [Nizaris] and the loyal citizens, for garrison duty to guard the city wall and prevent the citizens from ascending it.’ He also set loose his men to ‘seize whomsoever they could from the fringes of the army’, in order to encourage Mawdud and his men to move on as quickly as possible. This was hardly the spirit of jihad that Baghdad had hoped for.
Like Ridwan, Tughtigin of Damascus was a long-standing supporter of the Assassins, and for much the same reasons. He too may have had some religious sympathies for their cause – but, more cynically (and probably more realistically), he helped them because he knew he could rely on them to do his dirty work.
So, however attractive the prospect of Muslim unity might look from the elevated perspective of Baghdad, the Assassins and their local patrons all had good reasons to prevent the creation of a centralised and orthodox Sunni Muslim state in Syria.
Mawdud would have to go. And the fidais were the men who could make that happen.
Murder in the Mosque: The Death of Mawdud
On 2 October, 1113, fresh from more victories against the Franks, Mawdud was a feted guest of Tughtigin in Damascus. Security was tight. As he left the Great Mosque he was surrounded by the best bodyguards that money could buy – his security team on the day were described as ‘Daylamites, Turks, Khurasanis, men-at-arms and armour-bearers, with weapons of all kinds, fine-tempered blades and keen thrusting swords, rapiers of various sorts and unsheathed daggers.’ The procession was so tightly surrounded that it was as if they were walking ‘in the midst of a tangled thicket of intertwined spikes’. Maximum measures for his protection were in place.
No amount of protection could guarantee your safety if the Assassins were determined to get to you, however. When Mawdud and his men ‘entered the court of the mosque’ wrote Ibn al-Qalanisi, ‘a man leapt out from among the crowd…approaching the emir Mawdud as though to call down a blessing upon him.’ But there were no blessings. Instead, he ‘seized the belt of his riding cloak with a swift motion and struck him twice with his dagger below the navel’. The thrust, calculated to ensure that the dagger entered Mawdud’s body under his armoured shirt, was all too effective.
The murderer did not survive the attack. Given the need to keep the identity of the man who commissioned the act secret, perhaps that was always the plan – ‘as the Assassin struck his second blow swords fell upon him from every side and he was struck with every kind of weapon’. The frustration of Mawdud’s guards was taken out on the corpse. Belatedly, the head of the Assassin was cut off and paraded round for identification purposes – but no one recognised him. What remained of his body was burnt.
Tughtigin was close to Mawdud during the attack but remained suspiciously unharmed – they were said to be ‘hand in hand’ when the Assassin struck. Tughtigin just carried on walking ahead. In a surreal but strangely plausible moment which spoke of the shock of the incident, the wounded Mawdud tried to act as if nothing had happened. Instead, he just struggled to keep up with his all-too nonchalant host.
Despite his wounds ‘Mawdud, controlling himself, walked on until he was close to the north gate of the mosque. There he collapsed’. Ibn al-Qalanisi, as a Damascene chronicler writing about the ruler of Damascus, claimed, highly implausibly, that Tughtigin was very upset by his death. Few others were so sure.
The Franks took a keen interest in the affair, as they had been increasingly worried by Mawdud’s military successes. The historian William of Tyre, writing later in the century, claimed that the attack ‘was not done without the knowledge and consent of [Tughtigin]. For rumour declared that [Tughtigin] distrusted the power of that leader and feared that he might deprive him of the kingdom’.
The contemporary chroniclers Fulcher of Chartres, a well-informed companion of the king of Jerusalem, and Albert of Aachen similarly suggested that Tughtigin was behind the plot, and that his ‘deception became common knowledge among the Turks’. Even King Baldwin I of Jerusalem, tough and blunt as ever, was said to have written to Tughtigin immediately after the murder. He pointedly commented that ‘a people that has killed its main prop on its holy day in its house of worship truly deserves that God should destroy it.’
Not everyone knew who to blame, however. The Syriac Orthodox chronicler, Gregory Bar Hebraeus, had his own version. The information he had was that ‘some people have thought that [Ridwan], the lord of Aleppo, sent the [Ismaili]. And others think that it was [Tughtigin] himself who incited the murderer…and that he promised him gifts to do this, because he was afraid for his city by reason of Mawdud.’
Ultimately, it could have been either or even both of them. Tughtigin was close at hand, and hence the prime suspect. Alternatively, Ridwan, who died a just a few weeks later, may have had a hand in it. But it is also conceivable that the Assassins, who were highly motivated to delay any form of Sunni Muslim unity, may have undertaken the act on their own – or, that they had approached either Ridwan or Tughtigin to offer their services for cash and favours. With so many enemies and just a mutilated corpse as evidence, no one really knew who to blame. And this deliberate air of uncertainty only added to the fear which the death created.
Either way, the assassination was extremely successful from the perspective of the local Turkic rulers (and incidentally, of course, the Crusaders). The caliph of Baghdad was forced to look elsewhere for a leader to pursue his jihadist offensive against the Franks. He chose an emir called al-Bursuqi (atabeg of Mosul, 1113–1126) as his new general. Al-Bursuqi, however, was a far weaker figure and no match for the wily local Turkic ruling families or the aggressive Franks.
The Assassins too must have been delighted at the continuing fragmentation of Sunni power – Mawdud’s death was a coup for the Nizaris in Syria.
You can get your copy of Assassins and Templars: A Battle in Myth and Blood through
Yale University Press website
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Amazon.co.uk
To learn more about Steve, please visit his website or follow him on Instagram
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