4. The Old Man of the Mountain

Batiniyya

The Divide and Conquer strategy in Islam was cultivated by Masonic influences, which produced various reform movements advanced by their brethren in the Middle East, relationships European Masons cultivated by claiming that both represented two branches of a shared single heritage, the ancient Kabbalah, that was now united in their brotherhood, after having parted in separate directions, to produce the Ismaili Assassins in the East, known as the “Knights of the East,” and the Templar Knights, known as the “Knights of the West,” whose descendants were the Rosicrucians and Freemasons. It is generally agreed that the Epistles of the Brethren of Sincerity were composed by leading proponents of the Ismaili sect of Shiah Islam.[1] The Brethren of Sincerity significantly influenced the terrorist sect of the Assassins, led by Hasan-i Sabbah (c. 1050 – 1124), also famously known as the “Old Man of the Mountain,” who according to Masonic legend, transmitted their occult learning to the Templars.[2] The full purported extent of the influence of the Assassins was summarized by Francis A. Ridley in his history of the order:

 

From the Assassins, the ‘science’ of conspiracy and of underground organisation invaded the West, and was imparted directly to the Templars by the Syrian Assassins themselves, and, reaching Spain by a circuitous route and by the agency of Muslim Dervishes of a more orthodox character it ‘suffered a sea change’ and reappeared in the Jesuit Order, which, by means of unscrupulous application of its technique, became itself a great European (and American) power, and changed the course of European history from the sixteenth century onwards. And it is scarcely to be doubted that, however much and bitterly they may have been opposed to the creed and world-philosophy of the order founded by Ignatius Loyola, all the secret societies of modern time, even the most radical and anti-clerical, the Illuminati, the Grand Orient, the Anarchists, even the Communist International itself, their latest avatar, have borrowed their fundamentals in tactics and organisation from, or have been profoundly influenced, consciously or unconsciously, by “the power and secret of the Jesuits.” Such was the historic sequence which rose from the reformation effected by Abdullah-ibn-Maymun in the mid-ninth century AD.[3]

 

According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, the Shiah sect was founded in the seventh century by a Yemeni Jew named Abdallah ibn Saba who embraced Islam. When Mohammed’s son-in-law Ali became Caliph, Abdallah ascribed divine honors to him whereupon Ali banished him. After Ali’s assassination, Abdallah is said to have taught that Ali was not dead but alive, that a part of the Deity was hidden in him and that after a certain time he would return to fill the earth with justice. Until then, the divine character of Ali was to remain hidden in the Imams, who temporarily filled his place. As the Jewish Encyclopedia notes, “It is easy to see that the whole idea rests on that of the Messiah in combination with the legend of Elijah the prophet.”[4]

The office of Imam was thought among the Shia to have been passed on directly from Ali to the sixth Imam, Jafar as Sadiq (c. 702 – 765 CE), and then on through to the twelfth Imam, who disappeared in 873 AD. The Shia majority, following twelve Imams, were known as Twelvers. Some of Jafar’s followers, however, remained loyal to his son Ismail, and were known as Ismailis, or Seveners. With the death of Jafar as Sadiq in 765, Ismail and his son Mohammed (c. 740 – 813), the severity of the persecution of the Ismaili Imams and their followers by the Abbasids had considerably increased. Therefore, the Ismaili Imams were compelled to hide their identities, being the first dawr al-satr (“period of concealment”), from 765 to 909. During this period, the Imams were known as al-a’imma al-masturin (“the concealed Imams”). The Imam’s identity was hidden to protect him from persecution from the Abbasids and the community continued to operate under the authority of Mohammed ibn Ismail.[5] According to later tradition, these Imams were Ahmad al-Wafi (c. 766 – 828), Mohammed al-Taqi (c. 790 – 840), and Abd Allah al-Radi (c. 825 – 881).[6] Abd Allah al-Radi’s Hujjat was Ahmad, surnamed al-Hakim, to whom Abdullah ibn Maymun handed over his position.[7]

Mohammed al-Taqi, the eighth Imam, is said to have prepared with his followers the Epistles of the Brethren of Sincerity. It was alleged that the Brethren of Sincerity represent the original teachings of Abdullah ibn Maymun, who several biographies claim to have been Jewish, and who succeeded in capturing the leadership of the Ismaili movement in about 872 AD.[8] The Ismailis have been referred to in the Islamic world as Batiniyya, a word equivalent to “occult,” meaning “inner,” “inward,” or “hidden.”[9] As explained by Thierry Zarcone, Batiniyya “is actually linked to a doctrine based on the dialectic of the outer (Zahir) and inner or secret (Batin) meaning of the Quran, which dominates this current and also the whole of Shiism, especially the Ismaili branch, Batinism, and many Sufi lineages.”[10] They consider the Sharia as only the outer dimension of the Quran. Batin, however, provides access to the truer esoteric meaning through allegorical interpretation (Ta’wil). The Batini Ismaili movements therefore sometimes even reject the outer dimension, claiming that the hidden interpretations were made known by the Imams to a small number of initiates. In particular, the Shiah imam Jafar Sadiq, regarded as the founder of the occult sciences in Islam. and especially of the arcane science of letters and of alchemy, is supposed to have revealed his esoteric knowledge to select group of disciples.[11]

The earliest sources on the suspect beliefs of the Ismailis are found among both Sunni and Shiah authors. Ibn Razzam’s tract, Kitab al-radd ala’l- Ismailiyya (“The Book of Refutation of the Ismailis”), does not seem to have survived, but it is quoted in the Kitab al-Fihrist (“The Book Catalogue”), a compendium of the knowledge and literature of tenth-century Islam compiled by Ibn al-Nadim (d. 998). More importantly, it was used extensively a few decades later by another polemicist, Akhu Muhsin (d. 985/6), a Shiah from Damascus. Although his work also did not survive, long fragments from his account have been preserved by several later authors, notably the Egyptian historians Al-Nuwayri (1279 – 1333), Ibn al-Dawadari (fl. 1309 – 1335), and al-Maqrizi (1364 – 1442).[12] Akhu Muhsin reported that the father of Abdullah, Maymun the Occultist was a follower of the sect of the Bardesanites, founded by Bardaisan (154 – 222 AD), known in Arabic as Ibn Daysan, a Syriac-speaking Assyrian Christian astrologer, philosopher and Gnostic. According to the early Christian historian Eusebius (c.  260/265 – 339), Bardaisan was at one time a follower of the gnostic Valentinus, but later opposed him and also wrote against Marcion of Sinope (c. 85 – c. 160).[13]

According to the Firhist, Maymun the Occultist was the founder of the Maymuniyya sect, a branch of the Ghulat sect of the Khattabiyya, founded by the Shiah arch-heretic Abu al-Khattab, who was among the revolutionaries of the beginning of the Abbasid era (c. 755).[14] The Ghulat refers to a wide variety of extinct Shiah sects of the eighth and ninth century active Kufa in Lower Mesopotamia, whose beliefs included the attribution of a divine nature to the Imams, metempsychosis, a particular Gnostic creation myth involving pre-existent Azilla (“shadows”), whose fall from grace produced the material world, and an emphasis on secrecy and dissociation from outsiders.[15]  The Ghulat taught that the Imams, and in particular the sixth Imam Jafar as-Sadiq, the father of Ismail, were divine incarnations. Abu al-Khattab was cursed by for his extreme beliefs by Imam Jafar al-Sadiq. Nevertheless, Abu al-Khattab asserted that Imam Jafar transferred his authority to him by designating him to be his Wasi (deputy or executor of his will) and entrusting to him the Ism al-Azam (“Greatest Name”), which was supposed to grant its possessor with the power to perceive hidden matters. Abu al-Khattab also claimed that he had risen through the hierarchical grades of prophethood, apostlehood, angelic existence, and the Hojja—the proof of God’s existence on earth.[16]

 

Qarmatians 

According to Reynold A. Nicholson, in A Literary History of the Arabs, the rise of the Fatimid Empire—a Caliphate extant from the tenth to the twelfth centuries, spanning a large area of North Africa and West Asia, under the rule of the Fatimids, an Ismaili Shia dynasty—“was the climax of a deep-laid and skillfully organized plot—one of the most extraordinary in history.”[17] As Nicholson further explains:

 

Filled with a fierce hatred of the Arabs and with a free-thinker’s contempt for Islam, Abdullah b. Maymun conceived the idea of a vast secret society which should be all things to all men, and which, by playing on the strongest passions and tempting the inmost weaknesses of human nature, should unite malcontents of very description in a conspiracy to overthrow the existing regime.[18]

 

Abdullah claimed to be a Prophet, and performed purported miracles, pretending to traverse the earth at the blink of an eye and thus to obtain knowledge of things from afar.[19] But, with that attempt proving unsuccessful, he devised a far more grandiose plan. Abdullah is held to have been the real founder of the Qarmatian doctrine, which consisted in arousing the curiosity of its adepts through mysterious enticements and promises, and in leading them progressively through nine stages of initiation, culminating in the highest degree of knowledge: godlessness and unbelief.[20] In the earlier grades, the doctrine of Batin is set forth as essential to a true understanding of the Quran. The initiate was then taught that the true meaning requires an authoritative teacher, the Imam, or, since he was concealed, his representative, the Mahdi Abdullah ibn Maymun. In the higher grades, this inner meaning of the Quran is demonstrated to be substantially the Aristotelian and Neoplatonic doctrine, together with certain oriental elements derived from Zoroastrianism and Mazdakism, a Gnostic religion influenced by Manichaeism, founded by Zaradust-e Khuragen, a Zoroastrian Mobad who was a contemporary of Mani.[21] As explained by Reinhart P. Anne Dozy:

 

To link together into one body the vanquished and the conquerors; to unite in the form of a vast secret society with many degrees of initiation free-thinkers—who regarded religion only as a curb for the people—and bigots of all sects; to make tools of believers in order to give power to sceptics; to induce conquerors to overturn the empires they had founded; to build up a party, numerous, compact, and disciplined, which in due time would give the throne, if not to himself, at least to his descendants, such was Abdullah ibn Maymun’s general aim—an extraordinary conception which he worked out with marvellous tact, incomparable skill, and a profound knowledge of the human heart.

The means which he adopted were devised with diabolical cunning. Outwardly he was an Ismailite…

It was… not among the Shiites that he sought his true supporters, but among the Ghebers [Zoroastrians], the Manicheans, the pagans of Harran, and the students of Greek philosophy; on the last alone could he rely, to them alone could he gradually unfold the final mystery, and reveal that Imams, religions, and morality were nothing but an imposture and an absurdity. The rest of mankind—the “asses,” as Abdullah called them—were incapable of understanding such doctrines. But to gain his end he by no means disdained their aid; on the contrary, he solicited it, but he took care to initiate devout and lowly souls only in the first grades of the sect. His missionaries, who were inculcated with the idea that their first duty was to conceal their true sentiments and adapt themselves to the views of their auditors, appeared in many guises, and spoke, as it were, in a different language to each class. They won over the ignorant vulgar by feats of legerdemain which passed for miracles, or excited their curiosity by enigmatical discourse. In the presence of the devout they assumed the mask of virtue and piety. With mystics they were mystical, and unfolded the inner meanings of phenomena, or explained allegories and the figurative sense of the allegories themselves. Turning to advantage the calamities of the epoch and the vague hopes of a happier future fostered by all the sects, they promised to Moslems the early advent of the Mahdi announced by Mohammed, to the Jews that of the Messiah, and to the Christians that of the Paraclete. They even appealed to the orthodox Arabs, or Sunnis, who were the most difficult to win over because theirs was the dominant religion, but whose countenance was desirable as a shelter from suspicion and governmental interference, and whose wealth they needed for the furtherance of their designs. They flattered the national pride of the Arabs by assuring them that all the riches of earth belonged to their race, while the Persians were slaves by birth, and they sought to gain their confidence by displaying a contempt for riches and a deep piety; once that confidence was gained they harassed the Arab by their importunities and prayers until he became perinde ac cadaver [Latin for “like a dead body,” meaning blind obedience] and then easily persuaded him that it was his duty to support the sect by pecuniary gifts and to bequeath all his property to it.[22]

 

The Fatimid dynasty was founded by Abd Allah al-Mahdi Billah (874 – 934), who was born to a family that led the secret Ismaili missionary network (Da’wa), propagating on behalf of the Hidden Imam, Mohammed ibn Ismail, who would return as the prophesied Islamic messiah, the Mahdi. However, Sunni and Twelver Shiah sources rejected the claim of Fatimid descent from Ali ibn Abi Talib altogether, considering them impostors, some even claiming they were of Jewish descent.[23] Among the followers of Ibn Maymun was Hamdan Qarmat (fl. c. 874 – 899), the founder of the Qarmatians, who rejected the claim of Abd Allah al-Mahdi Billah as Imam, and clung to their belief in the coming of the Mahdi, and revolted against the Fatimid and Abbasid Caliphates. According to Ibn al-Jawzi (c. 1116 – 1201), an important Jurist of the Hanbali Madhab, the Qarmatians were Batiniyya and heretics, like the Zoroastrians and the Mazdakites, whose heresy arose among the dualists, the Magi who professed the teachings of the ancient philosophers. Their goal was the negation of all religions.[24] According to Silvestre de Sacy, relaying the descriptions of Nuwayri:

 

When Karmath had succeeded in establishing all this, and everyone had agreed to conform to it, he ordered the Dais to assemble all the women on a certain night so that they should mingle promiscuously with all the men. This, he said, was perfection and the last degree of friendship and fraternal union. Often a husband led his wife and presented her himself to one of his brothers when that gave him pleasure. When he (Karmath) saw that he had become absolute master of their minds, had assured himself of their obedience, and found out the degree of their intelligence and discernment, he began to lead them quite astray. He put before them arguments borrowed from the doctrines of the Dualists. They fell in easily with all that he proposed, and then he took away from them all religion and released them from all those duties of piety, devotion, and the fear of God that he prescribed for them in the beginning. He permitted them pillage, and every sort of immoral licence, and taught them to throw off the yoke of prayer, fasting, and other precepts. He taught them that they were held by no obligations, and that they could pillage the goods and shed the blood of their adversaries with impunity, that the knowledge of the master of truth to whom he had called them took the place of everything else, and that with this knowledge they need no longer fear sin or punishment.[25]

 

Under al-Jannabi, the Qarmatians came close to capturing Baghdad in 927 AD, and sacked Mecca in 930 AD, as well as Medina.[26] In their attack on Islam’s holiest sites, the Qarmatians desecrated the Zamzam Well with corpses of Hajj pilgrims and took the Black Stone from Mecca to Ain Al Kuayba in Qatif. The removal of the Black Stone symbolized the Qarmatian claim that Islam had now come to an end. Holding the Black Stone ransom, they forced the Abbasids to pay a huge sum for its return in 952 AD.[27]

According to Akhu Muhsin, Abdullah ibn Maymum was the forefather of the Fatimid dynasty. After its initial conquests, the Fatimid caliphate often allowed a degree of religious tolerance towards non-Shiah sects of Islam, including to Jews and Christians. The first to be appointed to the position of Vizier was the Jewish convert Yaqub bin Killis (c. 930 – 991), who was elevated to the office in 979 by al-Mu’izz li-Din Allah (932 – 975), the great-grandson of Maymun, and the fourth Fatimid Caliph. His successor, al-Aziz Billah (955 – 996), also appointed a number of Jews to high positions, though never as Vizier, probably under the influence of Ibn Killis who had maintained friendly relations with the Jewish community despite his own conversion. Manashsha (Manasseh) ibn Ibrahim, a close associate of Ibn Killis, was given important posts in Fatimid Syria.[28] Abu Sad al-Tustari (d. 1048), a Jewish merchant, sold to the Caliph al-Azhir (1005 – 1036) a female Sudanese slave from Egypt, who gave birth to the later al-Mustansir Billah (1029 – 1094), the eighth Fatimid.[29] After the death of Vizier al-Jarjara’i, who controlled political authority for the first nine years of al-Mustansir’s reign, his mother, under the influence of Abu Sad, now appointed a renegade Jew, Sadaqa bin Yusuf, in his place.[30]

 

Hashishim

 Hassan-i Sabbah ruled as Da’i (“seal”), or as Hujja (“proof”), acting on behalf of the absent Imam. After the death of the eighth Fatimid Caliph and eighteenth Ismaili imam, al-Mustansir, the powerful vizier, al-Afdal Shahanshah (1066 – 1121), appointed his younger son al-Musta’li (1074 – 1101) to the throne in Cairo, bypassing the claims of his older brother, Nizar ibn al-Mustansir (1045 – 1095). Many Ismailis, especially in Persia, rejected al-Musta’li’s Imamate and considered Nizar as the rightful imam. The Nizaris soon came to believe that a grandson (or son) of Nizar had been smuggled out of Egypt and brought to Alamut, and was the rightful imam, living in concealment (satr).[31] As a result, they split off from the Fatimid regime and founded the Nizari branch of Ismailism, with their own line of imams who claimed descent from Nizar.

Known as the Old Man of the Mountain, Hasan-i Sabbah is famous for having ruled a band of ruthless terrorists known as Assassins, to whom he taught a doctrine of nihilism. In The Genealogy of Morality, Nietzsche wrote:

 

When the Christian crusaders in the Orient came across that invincible order of Assassins—that order of free spirits par excellence whose lowest order received, through some channel or other, a hint about that symbol and spell reserved for the uppermost echelons alone, as their secret: “nothing is true, everything is permitted.” Now that was freedom of the spirit, with that, belief in truth itself was renounced.[32]

 

The Assassins were called in Arabic “Hashishim,” because they supplied Hashish (or marijuana) to their recruits for brainwashing purposes. As described by Marco Polo, the Old Man had made, “the biggest and most beautiful gardens imaginable. Every kind of wonderful fruit grew there. There were glorious houses and palaces decorated with gold and paintings of the most magnificent things in the world. Fresh water, wine, milk and honey flowed in streams. The loveliest girls versed in the arts of caressing and flattering men played every musical instrument, danced and sang better than any other women.”[33] The Old Man would make his dupes fall asleep so that when they awoke they would find themselves in this garden, which he persuaded them was the Paradise described by Mohammed. Thus assured of its existence, they were willing to risk their lives on any mission assigned to them.[34] In the late eleventh century, led by Hassan-i Sabbah, the Assassins established a castle at Alamut, or the Eagle’s Nest, a fortress stronghold in Persia, thus founding the Nizari Ismail state.

The Assassins waged an international war of terrorism against anyone who opposed them. According to Benjamin of Tudela, the famous Jewish traveler of the twelfth century:

 

In this vicinity reside the people called Assassins, who do not believe in the tenets of Mohammedanism but in those of one whom they consider like unto the prophet Kharmath they fulfil whatever he commands them, whether it be a matter of life or death. He goes by the name of Sheikh-al-Hashishin, or their Old Man, by whose commands all the acts of these mountaineers are regulated. His residence is in City of Kadmus, the Kedemoth of scripture, in the land of Sichon. The Assassins are faithful to one another by the command of their Old Man, and make themselves the dread of everyone, because their devotion leads them gladly to risk their lives, and to kill even kings when commanded. The extent of their country is eight days’ journey.[35]

 

It was under the reign of Rashid ad-Din Sinan (1131/1135 – 1193) in particular, that the Assassins attained infamy. In August 1176, Sultan Saladin (1137/1138–1193)—not yet master of Jerusalem, but by then ruler of the Middle East, including Mesopotamia, Syria, Egypt and Arabia, and having conquered the Ismailis Fatimids of Egypt—set out to finish off the sect and besieged Sinan’s fortress in Masyaf, in northwestern Syria. Sinan, however, was absent from Masyaf at the time of the attack. Stealthily, Sinan penetrated alone through the camp at night, bypassing Saladin’s guards, and found his way into the Sultan’s tent. Saladin awoke to find a dark figure slipping out of the door of his tent, and by his beside, a message pinned by a poisoned dagger which read:  “By the majesty of the Kingdom! What you possess will escape you in spite of all, but victory remains to us. We acquaint you that we hold you, and that we reserve you till your reckoning be paid.” Apparently horrified, as the story goes, Saladin chose to retreat and a concluded a peace treaty with the Assassins.[36]

A famous occasion of the fanaticism of the Assassins was described by Francis Ambrose Ridley, about an encounter that took place at Masyaf between Sinan’s successor and Henry Count of Champagne (1127 – 1181) in 1194, titular King of Jerusalem, then under the rule of Saladin:

 

To impress his distinguished visitor, Sinan took him on to the battlements of Masyaf, which towered above the beetling crags of the Lebanon. While the Crusader was looking over the dizzy cliffs, Sinan suddenly turned to him and abruptly asked if he had any subjects as obedient as the Assassins; then before the astonished Crusader had time to reply, the Old Man turned to some lads in white who were standing nearby, and pointed silently over the edge. Instantly the boys leapt into space and were dashed to pieces on the rocks far below before the eyes of the horrified Count, who left Masyaf with memories of the Assassins which he was unlikely to forget in a hurry![37]

 

Finally, in 1250 AD, the conquering Mongols, led by Mangu Khan, swept over Alamut and annihilated them. For the Ismailis, after the Mongol conquest of Alamut, the need to practice Taqiyya became necessary, not only for the protection of the community itself, which was now stateless, but also for safeguarding the line of the Nizari Ismaili Imamate during this period of unrest.[38] Taqiyya, the practice of dissimulation and secrecy of religious belief and practice, is found primarily in Shiah Islam. Taqiyya was initially practiced under duress by some of the Sahabah, the Prophet Mohammad’s companions.[39] Later, it became important for Sufis, but even more so for Shiah, who often experienced persecution as a religious minority. In Shiah theology, Taqiyya is permissible in situations where life or property are at risk and whereby no danger to religion would occur.[40]

“The first five centuries after the fall of Alamut,” explains Daftary, “represent the longest obscure phase in the entire history of the Ismailis.”[41] According to Nizari tradition, a group of their dignitaries had managed, before the fall of Alamut, to hide Shams al-Din Mohammed, the son of the last ruler of Alamut, Rukn al-Oin Khurshah, who succeeded to the imamate in 1257. Shams al-Din became synonymous in legendary Ismaili accounts with Shams-i Tabriz (1185 – 1248), the spiritual master of the famous Sufi poet, Jala al-Din Mohammed Rumi (1207 – 1273), known simply as Rumi.[42] Being obliged to hide their identity, the Nizari Imams appeared to outsiders as Sufi masters or Pirs, while their followers adopted the typically Sufi guise of disciples or Murids. At the same time, however, the Sufis themselves used the Batini Ta’wil, or esoteric exegesis and teachings, more generally ascribed to the Ismailis, such that a coalescence emerged between Persian Sufism and Nizari Ismailism.[43] Likewise, owing to their close relations with Sufism in post-Alamut era, the Persian-speaking Nizaris came to regard some of the greatest Sufi poets of Persia as Ismailis. Among them are Sanai (b. 1080), Attar of Nishapur (c. 1145 – c. 1221), Rumi’s spiritual master.[44]

The Nizari imamate was handed down in two parallel lines amongst the descendants of Shams al-Din Mohammed, divided into the Qasim-Shahi and Muhammed-Shahi branches. By the middle of the fifteenth century, the Nizari Imams of the Qasim-Shahi line emerged in Anjudan in central Persian, under the guise of Sufi Pirs. Perhaps the first Qasim-Shahi Imam to have settled in Anjudan was Islam Shah, a contemporary of Timur, also known as Tamerlane (1320s – 1405), a Turco-Mongol conqueror who founded the Timurid Empire in and around modern-day Afghanistan, Iran, and Central Asia, becoming the first ruler of the Timurid dynasty. It is, however, with his grandson, Al-Mustansir Billah II, who succeeded to the thirty-second Imam, that the Qasim-Shahi Nizari imams became definitely established, initiating the Anjudan Renaissance in Nizari Ismailism.[45] “The Qasim-Shahi Nizaris, of the Anjudan period,” explains Daftary, “essentially retained the teachings of the Alamut times.”[46] It is from the Imams of the Qasim-Shahi Nizaris that the leaders of the Assassins survived through the Nizari Ismailis, led by a hereditary line represented by the Agha Khans.[47]

 


[1] Livingstone. The Dying God, p. 111.

[2] Eloise Hart. “Rasa’il-e Ikhwan us Safa Epistles of the Brethren of Purity.” Pages of Medieval Mideastern History. Retrieved from http://www.amaana.org/ikhwan/ikhwan4.html

[3] Francis Ambrose Ridley. The Assassins (London: FA Ridley, 1938), p. 23.

[4] “Abdallah ibn Saba.” Encyclopedia Judaica. 1906.

[5] Farhad Daftary. A short history of the Ismailis (Edinburgh University Press, 1998), p. 3.

[6]  Ibid., pp. 100, 507.

[7] Vladimir Ivanow. Ismaili Tradition Concerning the Rise of the Fatimids (Islamic Research Association, 1942), p. 256.

[8] Bernard Lewis. The Jews of Islam (Princeton University Press, 1984), p. 104.

[9] Thierry Zarcone. “Occultism in an Islamic Context.” In Henrik Bogdan & James R. Lewis (ed.). Occultism in a Global Perspective (Routledge, 2013), p. 151.

[10] Ibid., p. 154.

[11] Ibid., p. 151.

[12] Farhad Daftary. The Ismailis: Their History and Doctrines (Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 8.

[13] Historia Ecclesiastica, 4.30.

[14] E.G. Browne. A Literary History of Persia (T. Fisher Unwin, Ltd, 1908), p. 396.

[15] Mushegh Asatryan. Controversies in Formative Shi’i Islam: The Ghulat Muslims and Their Beliefs (London: I.B. Tauris, 2017), pp. 163–178.

[16] A. Sachedina. “Abul’l-Kattab Adadi,” Encyclopædia Iranica, I/3, pp. 329-330. Retrieved from http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/abul-kattab-mohammad-b

[17] Reynold A. Nicholson. A literary History of the Arabs (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907), p. 271.

[18] Ibid.

[19] Browne. A Literary History of Persia, p. 396.

[20] Sachedina. “ABU’L-ḴAṬṬĀB ASADĪ.”

[21] De Lacy O’Leary. Arabic Thought and its Place in History (London: Trubner, 1922), p. 157–158.

[22] Reinhart Pieter Anne Dozy. Spanish Islam: a history of the Moslems in Spain (London, Chatto & Windus, 1913), p. 403–404.

[23] Daftary. The Ismailis, pp. 101–103.

[24] Joseph de Somogyi. “A Treatise on the Qarmatans in the ‘Kitab al-Muntazam’ of Ibn Al-Jauzi.” Rivista degli studi orientali, 13: 3 (September, 1932), pp. 250.

[25] Silvestre de Sacy. Exposé de le Religion des Druses (1838); cited in Nesta Webster. Secret Societies And Subversive Movements (New York: E.P. Dutton and Company, 1925).

[26] Francis Ambrose Ridley. The Assassins (London: FA Ridley, 1938), p. 35.

[27] “Qarmatiyyah.” Overview of World Religions (St. Martin’s College). Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20070428055134/http://philtar.ucsm.ac.uk/encyclopedia/islam/shia/qarma.html; John McHugo. A Concise History of Sunnis and Shi'is (2018), p. 123.

[28] Daftary. The Ismailis, p. 177.

[29] “Abu Saʿd Al-Tustari.” Encyclopaedia Judaica. Encyclopedia.com. Retrieved from https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/abu-sad-al-tustari

[30] Daftary. The Ismailis, p. 193.

[31] Ibid., pp. 301–302, 326, 509.

[32] Friedrich Nietzsche. On the Genealogy of Morality (Hackett Publishing, 1998), p. 109.

[33] The Travels of Marco Polo, XLI.

[34] Ibid.

[35] Cited in Ridley. The Assassins.

[36] Ibid.

[37] Ibid.

[38] Shafique N. Virani. The Ismailis in the Middle Ages: A History of Survival, a Search for Salvation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 12.

[39] “Takiyya.” Encyclopedia of Islam, Edition II (2000), 10: 134–5.

[40] Moojan Momen. An Introduction to Shi'i Islam (Yale University Press. p. 183.

[41] Daftary. A short history of the Ismailis, p. 159.

[42] Ibid., p. 162.

[43] Ibid., p. 166.

[44] Ibid., p. 167.

[45] Ibid., p. 170.

[46] Ibid., p. 174.

[47] Ibid., p. 194

Divide & Conquer