page_title: Hassan-i Sabbah
section_title: Capture of Alamut
hierarchical_section_title: Hassan-i Sabbah / Capture of Alamut
caption_attribution_description: English: Assassin fortress of Alamut. Persian miniature. فارسی: قلعهٔ حشاشین، الموت. مینیاتور ایرانی.
context_page_description: Hassan-i Sabbāh or Hassan as-Sabbāh was the founder of the Nizari Isma'ili state and its fidā'i military group known as Order of Assassins.
  Hassan-i Sabbāh was a missionary who converted the people of the Alborz Mountains of northern Iran to Nizari Isma'ilism in the late 11th century. He later seized a mountain fortress called Alamut.
context_section_description: His search for a base from which to guide his mission ended when in 1088 he found the castle of Alamut in the Rudbar area (modern Qazvin, Iran). It was a fort that stood guard over a valley that was about fifty kilometers long and five kilometers wide. This fortress had been built about the year 865; legend has it that it was built by a king who saw his eagle fly up to and perch upon a rock, a propitious omen, the importance of which this king, Wah Sudan ibn Marzuban, understood. Likening the perching of the eagle to a lesson given by it, he called the fort Aluh Amu(kh)t: the "Eagles' Teaching".
  Hassan's takeover of the fort was conducted without any significant bloodshed. To effect this transition Hassan employed a patient and deliberate strategy, one which took the better part of two years to effect. First Hassan sent his Daʻiyyīn and Rafīks to win over the villages in the valley, and their inhabitants. Next, key people amongst this populace were converted, and finally, in 1090, Hassan took over the fort by infiltrating it with his converts. Hassan gave the former owner a draft drawn on the name of a wealthy landlord and told him to obtain the promised money from this man; when the landlord saw the draft with Hassan's signature, he immediately paid the amount to the fort's owner, astonishing him. Another, probably apocryphal version of the takeover states that Hassan offered 3000 gold dinars to the fort's owner for the amount of land that would fit a buffalo's hide. The terms having been agreed upon, Hassan cut the hide into strips and linked them into a large ring around the perimeter of the fort, whose owner was thus undone by his own greed.
  While legend holds that after capturing Alamut Hassan thereafter devoted himself so faithfully to study, that in the nearly 35 years he was there he never left his quarters, excepting only two times when he went up to the roof.  This reported isolation is highly doubtful, given his extensive recruiting and organizational involvement in the growing Ismā'īlī insurrections in Persia and Syria. Nonetheless, Hassan was highly educated and was known for austerity, studying, translating, praying, fasting, and directing the activities of the Daʻwa: the propagation of the Nizarī doctrine was headquartered at Alamut. He knew the Qur'ān by heart, could quote extensively from the texts of most Muslim sects, and apart from philosophy, was well versed in mathematics, astronomy, alchemy, medicine, architecture, and the major scientific disciplines of his time. In a major departure from tradition, Hassan declared Persian to be the language of holy literature for Nizaris, a decision that resulted in all the Nizari Ismā'īlī literature from Persia, Syria, Afghanistan and Central Asia to be transcribed in Persian for several centuries.
caption: The Hashshashin's fortress of Alamut Castle.
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