Meanwhile the Grand Master was indulging

in an orgy of destruction of individual rulers

who opposed his creed;

the list is interminable,

but this is a fair example:

"The celebrated Aksunkur, Prince of Mosul,

was a warrior equally dreaded

by the Christians and the Assassins.

As this Prince, on his return from Ma'ara Masrin,

where the Moslem and Christian hosts

had parted without venturing to engage,

entered the Mosque at Mosul to perform his devotions,

he was attacked at the moment

when he was about to take his usual seat

by eight Assassins,

disguised as dervishes.

Three of them fell below the blows of the valiant Emir;

but ere his people could come to his aid,

he had received his death-wound

and expired."

Things thus continued for the fourteen years

and a quarter of the Second Grand Master's rule.

When he died he nominated his son Kia Mohammed as his successor.

Under Mohammed the killings continued,

a part of the sea-coast of Palestine came into Assassin hands,

and the cult leaders reaffirmed their overt belief in orthodox Islam.

In public, Ismailis were ordinary Moslems;

the secret doctrine of the divinely guider leader

was not to be discussed with the uninitiated.

But this most successful of secret societies

soon showed that its strength ultimately depended

upon a powerful leader:

and Kia Mohammed was not such.

Little by little it became obvious that his own son,

Hasan the Hated, was the stronger personality.

Now Hasan, through some magnetic power,

was able to capture the imagination of the Assassins,

soon having it believed

that he himself was none other than the Power of All Powers,

the Hidden Imam,

who had been mentioned by the first Grand Master;

an incarnation of all greatness.

So important was he that he was the fountain of power,

and others only held a measure of authority

because he allowed them to have it.

This final absurdity was lapped up by members

who had been conditioned to believe in things which were not,

shall we say, exactly self-evident to the ordinary man.

The doctrine of the all-powerful Invisible Imam was a part of Ismailism;

and Hasan was ready even during his early manhood to assume the role.

But, since his father was able to assert himself

by having some two hundred and fifty of Hasan followers murdered,

he thought it wiser to hold his hand.

In 1163 his chance came.

Mohammed died, and Hasan II issued

an order to all Ismailis to collect

below the castle of Alamut.

Never before had such an assembly of killers,

fanatics and dedicated perverters of the truth been seen.

Hasan, probably in a state of megalomania,

assured them that he had received a message

from the Almighty that as from now,

all the bond of religion were loosed:

everyone might do as he liked.

It was not necessary to keep up the pretences.

And, furthermore, he, Hasan, was none other than the Hidden Imam.

His word was law;

and he was a form of the divintiy,

not merely relaying instructions from above.

There was one further obstacle.

According to Ismaili doctrine,

the Hidden Imam was to be of the Family of Hashim,

the blood of Mohammed the Prophet.

Such descendants were known and revered:

and it was common knowledge that Hasan II was not one of them.

He overcame this difficulty by stating

that he was not in fact the true son of Kia Mohammed the Persian,

but an adopted child of the Caliphial family of Egypt.

This pretence was carried on for four years,

during which the crazed Hasan showed

that he was not as mad as he might have been,

by consolidating quite efficiently the power of the cult.

Eventually, he was assassinated by his brother-in-law, Namwar ('The Famous').

Mohammed II, son of Hasan II,

began the cultivation of letters and sciences

which was to distinguish successive Grand Masters of the Order.

It was a conceit of his,

in the time of the greatest flowering of Persian literature,

that he was supreme among poets and philosophers.

He used his assassins, too, to drive this point well home.

The Imam Razi, one of the greatest thinkers of the time,

refused to acknowledge the Assassins as the most advanced theologians:

so Mohammed II sent an envoy to him,

promising either a swift death by dagger or a pension of several thousand gold pieces a year.

Suddenly the learned Imam's discourses seemed to lose their bite.

One day, soon afterwards,

he was asked why he did not attack the Assassins as of old.

"Because," said the old man,

with a nervous glance around the assembly where a murderer might lurk,

"their arguments are so sharp, and pointed."