Alamut (Ismailli's)

Hassan-Al-Sabbah
Very early in the empire's life, the Fatimids sought to spread the Ismāʿīlī faith, which in turn would spread loyalty to the Imāmate in Egypt. One of their earliest attempts was taken by a Dai by the name of Hassan-Al-Sabbah.

Hassan-Al-Sabbah was born into a Twelver family living in the scholarly Persian city of Qom in 1056 AD. His family later relocated to the city of Tehran, which was an area with an extremely active Ismāʿīlī Daʿwah. He immersed himself in Ismāʿīlī thought; however, he did not choose to convert until he was overcome with an almost fatal illness and feared dying without knowing the Imām of his time.

Afterwards, Hassan-Al-Sabbah became one of the most influential Dais in Ismāʿīlī history; he became important to the survival of the Nizari branch of Ismailism, which today is its largest branch.

Legend holds that he met with Imām Ma'ad al-Mustansir Bi'llah and asked him who his successor would be, to which he responded that it would be his eldest son Nizar.

Hassan-Al-Sabbah continued his Dai activities, which climaxed with his taking of Alamut. Over the next two years, he converted most of the surrounding villages to Ismailism. Afterwards, he converted most of the staff to Ismailism, took over the fortress, and presented Alamut's king with payment for his fortress, which he had no choice but to accept. The king reluctantly abdicated his throne, and Hassan-Al-Sabbah turned Alamut into an outpost of Fatimid rule within Abbasid territory.

The Hashasheen / Assassiyoon
Surrounded by the Abbasids and other hostile powers and low in numbers, Hassan-Al Sabbah devised a way to attack the Ismāʿīlī's enemies with minimal losses. Using the method of assassination, he ordered the murders of Sunni scholars and politicians whom he felt threatened the Ismāʿīlīs. Knives and daggers were used to kill, and sometimes as a warning, a knife would be placed onto the pillow of a Sunni, who understood the message that he was marked for death. When an assassination was actually carried out, the Hashasheen would not be allowed to run away; instead, to strike further fear into the enemy, they would stand near the victim without showing any emotion and departed only when the body was discovered. This further increased the ruthless reputation of the Hashasheen throughout Sunni-controlled lands.

The English word, assassination, is said to have derived from the Arabic word Hashasheen. It means both "those who use hashish," and one of the Shiite Ismaili sects in the Syria of the eleventh century. However, Amin Maalouf, in his novel Samarkand, disputes the origin of the word assassin. According to him, it is not derived from the name of the drug hashish, which Western historians believed that members of the sect took. Instead, he proposed that this story was fabricated by Orientalists to explain how effectively the Ismāʿīlīs carried out these suicide-assassinations without fear. Maalouf suggests that the term is instead derived from the word Assass (foundation), and Assassiyoon, meaning "those faithful to the foundation."

Threshold of the Imāmate
After the imprisonment of Nizar by his younger brother Mustaal, it is claimed Nizar's son al-Hādī survived and fled to Alamut. He was offered a safe place in Alamut, where Hassan-Al-Sabbah welcomed him. However, it is believed this was not announced to the public and the lineage was hidden until a few Imāms later.

It was announced with the advent of Imām Hassan II. In a show of his Imāmate and to emphasize the interior meaning (the batin) over the exterior meaning (the zahir), he prayed with his back to Mecca, as did the rest of the congregation, who prayed behind him, and ordered the community to break their Ramadan fasting with a feast at noon. He made a speech saying he was in communication with the Imām, which many of the Ismāʿīlīs understood to mean he was the Imām himself.

Afterwards his descendants ruled as the Imāms at Alamut until its destruction by the Mongols.

Destruction by the Mongols
The stronghold at Alamut, though it had warded off the Sunni attempts to take it several times, including one by Saladin, soon met with destruction. By 1206, Genghis Khan had managed to unite many of the once antagonistic Mongol tribes into a ruthless, but nonetheless unified, force. Using many new and unique military techniques, Genghis Khan led his Mongol hordes across Central Asia into the Middle East, where they won a series of tactical military victories using a scorched-earth policy.

A grandson of Genghis Khan, Hulagu Khan, led the devastating attack on Alamut in 1256, only a short time before sacking the Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad in 1258. As he would later do to the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, he destroyed Ismāʿīlī as well as Islamic religious texts. The Imāmate that was located in Alamut along with its few followers were forced to flee and take refuge elsewhere.

Aftermath
After the fall of the Fatimid Caliphate and its bases in Iran and Syria, the three currently living branches of Ismāʿīlī generally developed geographically isolated from each other, with the exception of Syria (which has both Druze and Nizari) and Pakistan and rest of South Asia (which had both Mustaali and Nizari).

The Mustaali progressed mainly in Yemen and then shifted their dawat to India under Dai working on behalf of their last Imam, Taiyyab, and known as Bohra. From India, their various groups spread mainly in south Asia and eventually in the Middle East, Europe, Africa and America.

The Nizari have maintained large populations in Syria, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, and have smaller populations in China and Iran. This community is the only one with a living Imām, whose title is the Aga Khan. Badakshan which spills over North-Eastern Afghanistan, Eastern Tajikistan and Northern Pakistan is the only part of the world where the Ismailis makes up the majority of the population.

The Druze mainly settled in Syria and Lebanon and developed a community based upon the principles of reincarnation through their own descendants. Their leadership is based on community scholars, who are the only individuals allowed to read their holy texts. There is controversy whether this group falls under the classification of Ismāʿīlīsm or Islam because of their unique beliefs.

The Tajiks of China, being Ismaili, were subjected to being enslaved in China by Sunni Muslim Turkic peoples.The Hunza people are also Ismaili.They were also subject to being enslaved by Sunni Muslim Turkis. The Sunnis called them Rafidites and did not consider them Muslim.


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