Hasan reduced the original number of degrees of initiation

from nine to the mystical number of seven.

A similar number of regulations

formed the rules of the Order.

This, in fact,

comprised the working plan of the spreading of the Faith.

The First Rule was the the Missionary must know human psychology

in such a way as to be able

to select suitable people for admission to the cult;

and was summed up in the mnemonic:

Cast no seeds upon rocks.

The second rule of procedure was

the application of flattery and gaining

the confidence of the prospective member.

Third came the casting of doubt into the mind, by superior knowledge.

Fourthly,

the teacher must apply an oath to student

never to betray any of the 'truths' which were to be revealed to him.

Now he was told, as the fifth stage,

that Ismailism was a powerful secret organization,

supported by some of the most important figures of the time.

After this, the aspirant was questioned and studied,

to discover whether he had absorbed the opinions of the teacher

and attached himself sufficiently

into a position of dependence upon his ideas.

At this stage he was asked to meditate upon the meaning

of the reported saying of the prophet

that "Paradise lies in the shadow of swords".

In the final degree,

many difficult passages of the Koran were explained

in terms of allegory.  

How is it that the rules of this extraordinarily successful Order

are known in such detail?

It so happened that

when the Mongols eventually overthrew Alamut by force of arms,

their chief Halaku ('Destruction') Khan,

asked his chief minister to examine their library.

This most learned man, 'Father of Kings' Jawani,

later wrote a careful book

in which he detailed the organization of the Assassins,

whose name he attributed to the use of the drug Hashish,

which they were said to use

in stupefying candidates for the ephemeral visit to 'paradise'.

It is possible that recruits were made in another way

than by selecting gullible, fully grown youths.

Legend has it that Hasan, once master of Alamut,
used to buy unwanted children from their parents,
and train them in implicit obedience
and with the sole desire to die in his service.


Buzurg-Umid ('Great Promise'),
the second Grand Master,
maintained the power of the Assassins on much the same pattern:
building new forts, gaining fresh converts,
terrorizing those whom he did not want to have killed
and using them to further his designs of world conquest.
Sultan Sanjar of Persia,
in spite of several expeditions against the Viper's Nest,
as Alamut was now being called, could do little about him.
Ambassadors on each side were slain;
a notable religious leader was captured by the Assassins,
given a mock trial and flung into a furnace.
The Grand Master at this time seldom put on the field
more than two thousand men at a time:
but it must be remembered that they were killers
acting under an iron discipline,
and more than a match for any organized army
that they might ever have to face.