By the 1130s, the Assassins had created their own home in Syria — a network of strong mountainous castles and a safe base from which, if necessary, their fidais teams could operate. But there was something strange about the way in which their hit squads, the fidais, were deployed.
Having established an independent homeland, the obvious course of action for the famously clannish Assassins would be to withdraw from their Sunni neighbours — these were, after all, people who detested and persecuted them. The Assassins were determinedly intellectually self-sufficient. This, surely, was the Syrian Nizaris’ chance to say goodbye to fractious interactions with the more judgmental elements of mainstream Islam – they could now lower the shutters and keep to themselves.
The Economics of Security
The ruins of Alamut in Iran – photo by Ninara / Wikimedia Commons
And yet this did not happen. On the contrary, time after time we find the Assassins touting for business amongst their Sunni neighbours, only too happy to trade the deadly services of their murder squads for cash payments and political advantage. How did they get drawn into a series of escalating murders, settling other people’s old scores?
Historians have often either ignored this seeming contradiction, or claimed that it did not actually happen – instead, they argue, a lot of the ‘contracts to kill’ ostensibly taken out on behalf of Sunni clients were either obfuscations by the sect or fabrications by their enemies.
But it is important to remember what the successful underpinning of a viable medieval Middle Eastern state looked like. Most players had several compelling economic advantages on their side. Some possessed huge tracts of fertile land. Others had ports or access to other trade routes which produced high levels of taxable income. Some also had large cities with economically active urban populations producing attractive revenue streams. Almost everyone, including the cash-strapped crusaders, had one or more of these assets.
The Assassins had none.
Security in the medieval Holy Land was eye-wateringly expensive. Defence cost money – and, sadly for them, the essence of the Assassins’ solution to their defence problems was to hole up in places that would cause them economic problems.
Castles: A Financial Burden
Building a castle was cripplingly expensive. We do not have any surviving financial accounts for Nizari castle-building but, taking the example of the Templar construction project at Safad, south of the Assassins’ heartlands in Syria, we can see what a huge undertaking it was. Unlike the Nizaris, the Templars could call on external resources (from Europe) to help. And, nearer to hand, the castle itself was said to be able to draw on the revenues of 260 villages to support its maintenance. But, even so, it was still, literally, a monumental effort.
Building castles was a money pit. An anonymous pamphlet, written in 1260–1266, tells of the shocking amounts of cash that had to be poured into such a project. Building work at Safad began in the 1240s, and in the first couple of years, we are told that ‘the [Templars] spent on building the castle of Safad, in addition to the revenues and income of the castle itself, eleven hundred thousand Saracen bezants, and in each following year more or less forty thousand Saracen bezants.’
The ruins of Safad – photo by Zeller Zalmanson Pikiwiki Israel / Wikimedia Commons
And that was just the beginning. Garrisoning and maintaining a major castle was a never-ending financial drain. ‘Every day’ the same pamphlet recorded, ‘victuals are dispensed to 1,700 or more and in time of war, 2,200. For the daily establishment of the castle, 50 knights, 30 serjeant-brothers, and 50 Turcopoles are required with their horses and arms, and 300 crossbowmen, for the works and other offices 820 and 400 slaves. There are used there every year, on average, more than 12,000 mule-loads of barley and corn apart from other victuals, in addition to payments to the paid soldiers and hired persons, and in addition to the horses and tack and arms and other necessities which are not easy to account.’
It is clear that even in the most fertile and productive countryside, castle-building was a devastatingly expensive commitment. Safad was no ordinary castle, of course. It was the medieval equivalent of an aircraft-carrier. The Assassins’ castles tended to be simpler, and with smaller garrisons. But they were building a huge network of such fortifications. There were dozens of castles in places that were, by their very nature, mountainous and hard to access – not the most economically desirable real estate. As one Western visitor wrote, in a fairly matter-of-fact way, the land around their castles ‘is not particularly fertile, unless one lives off beasts.’
The costs they were incurring must have been prohibitive, especially for a group with very limited sources of income. If we are looking for a reason why the fiercely independent Nizaris of Syria often demeaned themselves by acting as hired killers for their hated Sunni neighbours, we probably need look no further.
The Assassins were never rich. Like the Templars, their mystique was a fertile source of stories about treasure and other febrile imaginings. But the truth, in both cases (and particularly with regards to the Nizaris), was far more prosaic – building and maintaining large castle networks was not cheap. They both struggled to get by.
The chronicler Juwayni was present in the final days of the Assassins’ vast fortress of Alamut, the capital of their state in Persia. He was involved in gathering their property together and assessing its value. Juwayni made a point of rummaging through their library (he had, after all, a professional interest in such things) and looked over the other valuables they had collected. But, other than for an historian, it is clear that these were slim pickings. Their new overlords were underwhelmed.
The last Nizari leader ‘offered his treasures [to the Mongols],’ wrote Juwayni, ‘as a token of his allegiance. These were not so splendid as fame had reported them but, such as they were, they were brought out of the castle.’ Even these choice items were not deemed worthy of being sent to the Khan, however. Instead, ‘the greater part thereof was distributed by the King among his troops.’ To the victors, the spoils – but the spoils, in this case, were barely worth having.
The Assassins may have been as fierce as mountain lions – but they were also as poor as church mice.
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
By Steve Tibble
By the 1130s, the Assassins had created their own home in Syria — a network of strong mountainous castles and a safe base from which, if necessary, their fidais teams could operate. But there was something strange about the way in which their hit squads, the fidais, were deployed.
Having established an independent homeland, the obvious course of action for the famously clannish Assassins would be to withdraw from their Sunni neighbours — these were, after all, people who detested and persecuted them. The Assassins were determinedly intellectually self-sufficient. This, surely, was the Syrian Nizaris’ chance to say goodbye to fractious interactions with the more judgmental elements of mainstream Islam – they could now lower the shutters and keep to themselves.
The Economics of Security
And yet this did not happen. On the contrary, time after time we find the Assassins touting for business amongst their Sunni neighbours, only too happy to trade the deadly services of their murder squads for cash payments and political advantage. How did they get drawn into a series of escalating murders, settling other people’s old scores?
Historians have often either ignored this seeming contradiction, or claimed that it did not actually happen – instead, they argue, a lot of the ‘contracts to kill’ ostensibly taken out on behalf of Sunni clients were either obfuscations by the sect or fabrications by their enemies.
But it is important to remember what the successful underpinning of a viable medieval Middle Eastern state looked like. Most players had several compelling economic advantages on their side. Some possessed huge tracts of fertile land. Others had ports or access to other trade routes which produced high levels of taxable income. Some also had large cities with economically active urban populations producing attractive revenue streams. Almost everyone, including the cash-strapped crusaders, had one or more of these assets.
The Assassins had none.
Security in the medieval Holy Land was eye-wateringly expensive. Defence cost money – and, sadly for them, the essence of the Assassins’ solution to their defence problems was to hole up in places that would cause them economic problems.
Castles: A Financial Burden
Building a castle was cripplingly expensive. We do not have any surviving financial accounts for Nizari castle-building but, taking the example of the Templar construction project at Safad, south of the Assassins’ heartlands in Syria, we can see what a huge undertaking it was. Unlike the Nizaris, the Templars could call on external resources (from Europe) to help. And, nearer to hand, the castle itself was said to be able to draw on the revenues of 260 villages to support its maintenance. But, even so, it was still, literally, a monumental effort.
Building castles was a money pit. An anonymous pamphlet, written in 1260–1266, tells of the shocking amounts of cash that had to be poured into such a project. Building work at Safad began in the 1240s, and in the first couple of years, we are told that ‘the [Templars] spent on building the castle of Safad, in addition to the revenues and income of the castle itself, eleven hundred thousand Saracen bezants, and in each following year more or less forty thousand Saracen bezants.’
And that was just the beginning. Garrisoning and maintaining a major castle was a never-ending financial drain. ‘Every day’ the same pamphlet recorded, ‘victuals are dispensed to 1,700 or more and in time of war, 2,200. For the daily establishment of the castle, 50 knights, 30 serjeant-brothers, and 50 Turcopoles are required with their horses and arms, and 300 crossbowmen, for the works and other offices 820 and 400 slaves. There are used there every year, on average, more than 12,000 mule-loads of barley and corn apart from other victuals, in addition to payments to the paid soldiers and hired persons, and in addition to the horses and tack and arms and other necessities which are not easy to account.’
It is clear that even in the most fertile and productive countryside, castle-building was a devastatingly expensive commitment. Safad was no ordinary castle, of course. It was the medieval equivalent of an aircraft-carrier. The Assassins’ castles tended to be simpler, and with smaller garrisons. But they were building a huge network of such fortifications. There were dozens of castles in places that were, by their very nature, mountainous and hard to access – not the most economically desirable real estate. As one Western visitor wrote, in a fairly matter-of-fact way, the land around their castles ‘is not particularly fertile, unless one lives off beasts.’
The costs they were incurring must have been prohibitive, especially for a group with very limited sources of income. If we are looking for a reason why the fiercely independent Nizaris of Syria often demeaned themselves by acting as hired killers for their hated Sunni neighbours, we probably need look no further.
The Assassins were never rich. Like the Templars, their mystique was a fertile source of stories about treasure and other febrile imaginings. But the truth, in both cases (and particularly with regards to the Nizaris), was far more prosaic – building and maintaining large castle networks was not cheap. They both struggled to get by.
The chronicler Juwayni was present in the final days of the Assassins’ vast fortress of Alamut, the capital of their state in Persia. He was involved in gathering their property together and assessing its value. Juwayni made a point of rummaging through their library (he had, after all, a professional interest in such things) and looked over the other valuables they had collected. But, other than for an historian, it is clear that these were slim pickings. Their new overlords were underwhelmed.
The last Nizari leader ‘offered his treasures [to the Mongols],’ wrote Juwayni, ‘as a token of his allegiance. These were not so splendid as fame had reported them but, such as they were, they were brought out of the castle.’ Even these choice items were not deemed worthy of being sent to the Khan, however. Instead, ‘the greater part thereof was distributed by the King among his troops.’ To the victors, the spoils – but the spoils, in this case, were barely worth having.
The Assassins may have been as fierce as mountain lions – but they were also as poor as church mice.
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
Top Image: Page from a Chinghiz-nama Manuscript: Hulagu Khan Destroys the Fort at Alamut – Wikimedia Commons
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