Who was Hasan ?

He was the son of a Shiah in Khorasan , a most bigoted man,

who claimed that his ancestors were Arabs , from Kufa .

this assumption was probaly due to the fact that such a lineage bolstered

up claims to religious importance , then as now , among Moslems .

The people of the neighbourhood , many of them also Shiahs ,

stated very decisively that this Ali

was a Persian , and so were his forebears .

It is generally thought that this is the true version .

As the Governor of the Province was an orthodox Moslem,

Ali spared no efforts to assume the same guise.

This is considered to be completely permissible,

the Doctrine of Intelligent Dissimulation .

As there was some doubt as to his reliability

in the religious sense , he retired into a monastic retreat,

and sent his son Hasan to an orthodox school.

This school was so ordinary one.

It was here that Hasan met Omar Khayyam

, the tentmaker-poet and astronomer ,

later to be the poet laureate of Persia,

and Nizam-ul-Mulk ,

who rose from peasanthood to become prime minister.

These three made a pact ,according to Nizam's autobiography , whereby

whichever rose to high office first would help the others .

After Nizam became vizier to Alp-arslan the Turkish sultan of Persia ,

Hasan wandered through the Middle East , remaining in obscurity ,

waiting for his chance to attain the power of which he had dreamed .

Arslan the Lion died , and was succeded by Malik Shah.

                              Dissimulation Master

Suddendly , Hasan presented himself to Nizam ,

demanding to be given a place at court .

Delighted to fulfil his childhood vow ,

the vizier obtained for him a favoured place , and relates

what transpired thus in his autobiography :

"I had him made a minister by my strong and extravagant recommendations .

Like his father , however , he proved to be a fraud , hypocrite

and a self-seeking villain .

He was so clever at dissimulation that he appeared to be pious

when he had not,

and before long he had somehow completely captured the mind of the Shah."

Malik Shah was young ,

and Hasan was trained in the Shiah art of winning people

over by apparent honesty.

But Nizam was still the most important man in the realm ,

with an impressive record of honest dealing and achievements.

Hasan decided to eliminate him.

The King had asked in that year , 1078,

for a complete accounting of the revenue and expenditure of the empire ,

and Nizam told him that this would take over a year.

Hasan , on the other hand ,

claimed that the whole work could be done in forty days,

and offered to prove it.

The task was assigned to him.

But something went wrong and Nizam struck back at the last moment saying :

"By Allah , this man will destroy us all unless he is rendered harmless ,

though i cannot kill my playmate."

Whatever the truth may be ,

it seems that Nizam managed to have such disparities

introduced into the final calligraphic version of the accounts

that when Hasan started to read them they appeared so absurd

that the Shah , in fury , ordered him to be exiled .

As he had claimed to have written the accounts in his own hand ,

Hassan could not justify their incredible deficiencies .

                                Exile

Hasan had friends in Isfahan , where he immediately fled .

There survives a record of what he said there ,

which sheds interesting light upon what was in his mind.

One of these friends , Abu-al-Fazal, notes that Hasan ,

after reciting the bitter tale of his downfall,

shouted these words , in a state of uncontrollable rage:

"If I had two , just two, devotees who would stand by me ,

then I would cause the downfall of that Turk and that peasant."

Fazal concluded that Hasan had taken leave his senses ,

and tried to get him out of this ugly mood.

Hasan took umbrage,

and insisted that he was working on a plan ,

and that he would have his revenge .