Arbaaz Mir

Arbaaz Mir was a member of the Indian Brotherhood of Assassins based in Amritsar during the 19th century. He was the husband of Princess Pyara Kaur of the Sikh Empire and the father of Jayadeep Mir, as well as an ancestor to the Indian actress Monima Das.
Born in the Kashmir region of India, Arbaaz lost his family at a young age, when his home was conquered by Maharaja Ranjit Singh, leading him to resent the ruler for most of his life. Forced to survive on the streets, Arbaaz became a thief until an encounter with the Assassin Mentor Hamid, who brought him into the Brotherhood and trained him to the rank of Master Assassin.
In 1839, Arbaaz became entangled in a conflict with the British Templars over the Koh-i-Noor, a Piece of Eden of immense power which was guarded by Ranjit Singh. Infiltrating the Maharaja's summer palace, Arbaaz met Singh's granddaughter Pyara Kaur, who helped him in his quest to recover the Koh-i-Noor in exchange for protecting her grandfather from the Templars. Although the Assassin ultimately failed to rescue Singh, he managed to keep the Koh-i-Noor out of the Templars' hands and subsequently entered into a relationship with Pyara. 
In 1841, after the Templars stole the Koh-i-Noor from the Brotherhood, Arbaaz embarked on a mission to recover the Piece of Eden. Discovering the Templars to also be in possession of a Precursor box, which they used in conjunction with the Koh-i-Noor to reveal the locations of several Isu temples, Arbaaz followed them to Afghanistan, but was captured. 
Taken to Punjab, Arbaaz soon managed to escape and recovered the Koh-i-Noor and Precursor box in the process. However, he ultimately lost the box during a confrontation with the Master Templar William Sleeman, who took Pyara hostage, forcing Arbaaz to rescue her. Later, Arbaaz met the British Assassin Ethan Frye and gave him the Koh-i-Noor in order to hide it.
After the birth of his son Jayadeep, Arbaaz contacted Ethan, with whom he had become good friends, to train the boy as an Assassin. However, Jayadeep possessed a weakness for violence, which created a rift in his relationship with his father, especially after Arbaaz was forced to intervene and save Jayadeep during a mission. When his son was sentenced to death by the Brotherhood for his failure, Arbaaz did not interfere, but was eventually convinced by Ethan to banish the boy to England as an alternative punishment.
==Biography==
===Early life===
Arbaaz Mir was born in Kashmir in northwestern India during the early 19th century to a Muslim family. His home region was conquered by Maharaja Ranjit Singh of the Sikh Empire in 1819, leading to the deaths of numerous Muslims in Kashmir, including Arbaaz's family. This led Arbaaz to grow up with a resentment towards Singh, considering him a cold-blooded killer.Assassin's Creed Encyclopedia
Following the death of his family, Arbaaz was forced to survive on the streets alone and opted to become a thief.Assassin's Creed Chronicles: India – Database: Arbaaz Mir At some point, he was involved in a meeting gone wrong, and was rescued by Hamid, the Mentor of the Indian Assassins. Indebted to the man, Arbaaz became an Assassin and in time learned to fight for a cause larger than himself.
===Search for the Koh-i-Noor===
In June 1839, Hamid tasked Arbaaz with the recovery of a map detailing Isu artifacts, most notably the Koh-i-Noor diamond, a powerful Piece of Eden. Upon his safe return to the Assassin headquarters in Amritsar, Hamid informed Arbaaz of the legend surrounding the Koh-i-Noor, and that the British Templars were attempting to obtain the artifact. The Koh-i-Noor had been in the possession of Ranjit Singh since 1830, who kept it safe from the hands of his enemies, but was nearing the end of his life.Assassin's Creed: Brahman
As Singh's heirs were not as interested in the diamond as their father, the Templars aimed to take Singh's life. Hamid tasked Arbaaz with ensuring the Maharaja's protection, an objective he reluctantly agreed to, but only for the sake of the Brotherhood. Before leaving, Arbaaz bought Hamid's slave Raza Soora from him, noticing the abuse the boy was subjected to under Hamid.
Arbaaz later revealed to Raza that he had no intention of protecting Singh and instead sought to retrieve the Koh-i-Noor ahead of the Templars. Taking up the disguise of an emissary from Kashmir and his servant, Arbaaz and Raza entered Ranjit Singh's summer palace, where the Maharaja held a feast. Believing the Koh-i-Noor to be kept in a hidden chamber underneath the palace, Arbaaz told Raza to look out for Singh's treasure keeper, Bustee Ram.Assassin's Creed Chronicles: India – Scroll 7 Assassin's Creed Chronicles: India – Scroll 9
After being allowed to join the feast, Arbaaz was greeted by William Hay Macnaghten, assistant to the British Governor-General of India Lord Auckland, and General Francis Cotton. Arbaaz recognized the Templar insignia on Cotton's chest, though Cotton also identified Arbaaz as an Assassin by his movements. After Macnaghten left, Arbaaz assured Cotton that they were not enemies this time, telling the Templar that he had his own reasons to want Singh dead, though "it wouldn't be the first time [he had] to clean up after [their] kind".
Soon after, Arbaaz's attention was caught by Princess Pyara Kaur, Ranjit Singh's granddaughter. Upon noticing Singh handing Bustee a diamond, Arbaaz told Raza to follow him and that he would find him later, deciding instead to follow Pyara. Arbaaz then tracked her to the palace courtyard, handing her a blossom that he had swiped from the palace's dining room. As a result of the conversation that stemmed from the gesture, the two later shared a moment of intimacy.
Afterwards, Arbaaz found Raza and followed him into the Tosha Khana, a series of secret chambers beneath the palace that were hidden by water-based door mechanism. Exploring the caverns filled with statues of gods, Arbaaz found a chest containing the diamond, but quickly dismissed it as a worthless replica. Upon further exploration, they stumbled upon illusionary walls and other unique statues of Hindu gods.
There, Raza found the real Koh-i-Noor in a pool of water contained within the hands of the statue of Durga; unbeknownst to them, their progress had been tracked by Cotton. Upon their return to ground level, Arbaaz was arrested by Singh's guards, who had been alerted by Cotton and Macnaghten. It was at this point that Arbaaz hid the real Koh-i-Noor under Raza's turban, enabling the latter to escape with the artifact, while the guards took the replica.
===Conflict with Cotton===
Singh's guards placed Arbaaz in a cell, where Raza and Pyara later came to see him. It was during this meeting that Pyara released him from his imprisonment, after Arbaaz told her about his task of ensuring her grandfather's safety. To Arbaaz's surprise and disapproval, Raza had given the Koh-i-Noor to Pyara, thwarting his plan to escape with the artifact and leave the Maharaja to fend for himself. After Pyara informed Arbaaz that Singh was drinking tea with the British, Arbaaz and Raza hurried to the imperial palace, the former begrudgingly so.
Scaling the structure, Arbaaz eliminated the patrolling guards as Raza stayed close behind, at one point turning back to prevent Raza from falling to his death. The two then separated, with Arbaaz infiltrating the palace's interior by leaping into the main hall from above, knocking Macnaghten over upon his landing and attacking Cotton with a chakram.
Following this, Arbaaz roughly slapped the tea cup from Singh's hands, perceiving that it was poisoned; despite this, Cotton informed Arbaaz that he was too late to prevent the Maharaja's demise. Responding in his weakened state, Singh took out his sword to attack Cotton, calling the Templar a "coward" and "deceiver", while further going on to state that India would not fall to his Order. Cotton instead called the guards, yelling that the Maharaja was under attack by an assassin—Arbaaz.
Arbaaz fled the hall, followed by Cotton and Singh's men as he made his way to the courtyard. There, while Arbaaz was fighting imperial guards, Cotton tried to kill Pyara and take the Koh-i-Noor, but was halted by Raza, who dug his fingernails into the Templar's forehead. As Cotton turned on Raza, Pyara activated the Koh-i-Noor, which took up the appearance of Durga.
Cotton instead attacked the entity, firing at it with his pistol and accidentally destroying the Koh-i-Noor. Seeing the entity become enraged, Arbaaz took Raza and dove into a water pond before the entity released a burst of energy across the area, killing Cotton and all the remaining guards. After the explosion, the Koh-i-Noor miraculously reconstructed itself and Arbaaz finally managed to hand it to Hamid.Assassin's Creed Chronicles: India – Scroll 14
===Pursuing William Sleeman===
Following the events at the summer palace, Arbaaz and Pyara started a romantic relationship, though because of their differences in social status, the Assassin often had to sneak into the palace to visit the princess in secret. On one such occasion in 1841, Arbaaz took the opportunity to pickpocket several of the guards before reaching Pyara's chambers, where his lover surprised him with a knife to the throat, revealing that she had started practicing with a blade for self-defense.Assassin's Creed Chronicles: India – The Assassin's Heart
After sharing an intimate moment, Arbaaz took his leave and prepared to return to the Assassin headquarters, as Hamid suspected the Templars had resumed their search for the Koh-i-Noor. En route to the hideout, Arbaaz found the city crawling with East India Company soldiers, and he soon discovered the reason: the Templars, led by Cotton's replacement William Sleeman, had found the Assassin's headquarters and ransacked it, kidnapping Hamid and stealing the Koh-i-Noor.Assassin's Creed Chronicles: India – The Absent Handler
Following the blood trail left behind, Arbaaz soon located a high-ranking Company officer and interrogated him for Hamid's whereabouts, learning that his Mentor and the Koh-i-Noor had been taken to the Templars' headquarters in Amritsar. The Assassin proceeded to infiltrate the headquarters, where he eliminated some high-ranking Templar guards and rescued Hamid by disguising himself as a civilian.Assassin's Creed Chronicles: India – The Quest Begins
Once safe, Hamid told Arbaaz that Sleeman and his right-hand man, Alexander Burnes, planned to unravel the Koh-i-Noor's secrets with the help of a Precursor box in their possession. With this information, Hamid assigned Arbaaz the task of retrieving both the diamond and the box from the Templars, and directed him to their outpost: a palace which Hamid suspected housed a Precursor site underneath.
Arbaaz followed Sleeman to the palace, where the latter ordered his men to guard the entrance, knowing the Assassins could not be too far behind. After retrieving the handle to the palace's doors from one of the guards, Arbaaz made his way inside just as the Templars became aware of his presence and opened fire using Puckle guns.
Arbaaz found himself back in the Tosha Khana and followed Sleeman and his men closely behind as they made their way to the heart of the temple. While following them, Arbaaz discovered the temple housed many ancient defense mechanisms, with several of Sleeman's escorts falling victim to them, but the Assassin was able to navigate past them with relative ease.Assassin's Creed Chronicles: India – The Secret Below Reaching the center of the temple, he confronted Sleeman, just as the Templar used the Koh-i-Noor and the box to activate a map highlighting various locations across the globe.Assassin's Creed Chronicles: India – The Enemy Revealed
Arbaaz demanded that Sleeman hand over the artifacts, lying that he was accompanied by hundreds of Assassins waiting to strike, but the Templar responded by firing his gun at Arbaaz, who dodged the shot and let it hit a Precursor structure instead. However, this triggered a chain reaction that caused the entire temple to collapse, though Arbaaz managed to escape to safety and was reunited with Hamid.
After Arbaaz told his Mentor about the map and that one of the locations shown was in Afghanistan, Hamid revealed that he had followed Burnes and discovered the Templars were organizing an expedition there. Deducing the Templars were after a Precursor temple in Afghanistan, Arbaaz traveled there to stop them.
===War in Afghanistan===
Arbaaz arrived in Herat, Afghanistan, where he infiltrated the citadel in the center of the city. The fortress was being besieged by Afghan forces, trying to reclaim the citadel after it had been occupied by British soldiers, and Arbaaz took advantage of the ongoing battle to make his way through the fortress undetected. Along the way, he found five hidden messages which had been written by the ancient Babylonian proto-Assassin Iltani, detailing her assassination of Alexander the Great.Assassin's Creed Chronicles: India – The Silent Assist
Reaching the entrance of the fortress, Arbaaz opened the gates to facilitate the Afghans' assault and create a distraction whilst he followed Sleeman and his guards into the Precursor temple underneath the citadel. The Assassin managed to beat the Templars to the heart of the temple, finding a pedestal, but was forced to surrender when Sleeman's men surrounded him and held him at gunpoint.Assassin's Creed Chronicles: India – What Lies Beneath
Knocked out and taken captive by the Templars, Arbaaz was left in the care of Burnes, along with the Koh-i-Noor and the Precursor box, in Punjab, Pakistan, as Sleeman had been called to deal with an Afghan uprising. Awakening near the Katasraj Temple, Arbaaz was greeted by Burnes, who revealed that the Templars knew everything about the Assassin, including his relationship with Pyara, and that Sleeman would deal with him upon his return.Assassin's Creed Chronicles: India – The Thief Within
After Burnes left, Arbaaz escaped his binds using a knife he had stolen from him and sneaked past the guards to reach his equipment, freeing some captive pilgrims along the way. Upon retrieving his weapons and tools, Arbaaz used a rifle to eliminate several guards from a distance and facilitate his escape, although this alerted the Templars to his presence.
The Assassin managed to avoid the Templars' efforts to kill him, including several rampant elephants, and reached a courtyard where Burnes and several of his men stood. Burnes challenged Arbaaz to a duel which the latter proceeded to win, although he chose to spare his opponent's life. This earned him Burnes' respect and he ordered his men to stand down and allow the Assassin to leave with the artifacts he had come to retrieve.Assassin's Creed Chronicles: India – The Escape
===Saving Pyara===
Arbaaz returned to Amritsar and met with Hamid to inform him of his mission's success. However, the latter revealed that Sleeman and the Templars had taken over the Maharaja's summer palace and were holding Pyara hostage to exchange her for the lost artifacts. Despite knowing it to be a trap, Arbaaz made his way to the palace while avoiding the Templar guards ordered to kill him.Assassin's Creed Chronicles: India – The Rescue
Confronting Sleeman in the palace's main chamber, he demanded that the Assassin hand over the Koh-i-Noor and the Precursor box while threatening Pyara's life. After Arbaaz made his way across the room discreetly to avoid endangering Pyara, Sleeman summoned his last remaining guards to deal with the Assassin, who quickly dispatched them. The Templar then held Pyara at knifepoint in a desperate last effort to obtain the artifacts.
As Arbaaz did as he was told and tossed the Koh-i-Noor and the box into the air, Pyara used her own concealed blade to stab Sleeman in his side, forcing him to let her go. Arbaaz and Pyara then escaped to safety, where the former revealed that he had managed to retrieve the Koh-i-Noor in the confusion, but the box was in Templar hands once again.
Later, Arbaaz, aware of the danger the Koh-i-Noor posed if it fell into the wrong hands again, met with his friend Ethan Frye of the British Brotherhood and gave him the artifact for safekeeping. Ethan proceeded to hide it somewhere in India, where it would remain until the end of the century.Assassin's Creed: Syndicate – The Last Maharaja – The Great Jewel Heist
===Jayadeep's exile===
Arbaaz and Pyara eventually married and, in 1843, had a son, Jayadeep Mir.Assassin's Creed: Syndicate – Database: Henry Green When Jayadeep was four years old, Arbaaz began to train him as an Assassin and recognized that his son was exceptionally talented. Envisioning Jayadeep as a great warrior and wanting to ensure that the boy's abilities were not hindered by familial ties, Arbaaz wrote to Ethan to continue the training.Assassin's Creed: Underworld – 
However, in the years that Ethan prepared Jayadeep for missions in the field, he realized that for all of his potential for greatness, Jayadeep could never be the warrior Arbaaz wanted him to be. Arbaaz was angry when Ethan informed him that Jayadeep lacked the killer instinct required for assassination but nevertheless delayed Jayadeep's blooding to mold his son into the warrior that he believed was the making of a great Assassin.
Eventually, the time came for Jayadeep's first assignment: the assassination of a Templar named Tjinder Dani who was planning to establish a Templar outpost in Amritsar. Arbaaz joined his son to provide the horses for their getaway but Ethan's estimation of Jayadeep proved to be correct. Jayadeep hesitated before he could deliver a killing blow to Dani and the subsequent fight between the Templar and the Assassin spilled out onto the street, forcing Arbaaz to make the kill himself. Jayadeep's failure risked exposing the Brotherhood itself and for that the Assassins were to have him executed.
Although reluctant, Arbaaz's loyalty to the Creed was such that he was willing to see his son die, much to Pyara's distress. However, Ethan returned to India with a proposition that would save Jayadeep's life as well as Arbaaz's marriage. It was agreed that Jayadeep would be sent into exile in London to work undercover for the British Assassins, whose presence in the capital had been severely reducedAssassin's Creed: Syndicate – A Spanner in the Works since the deaths of Edward KenwayAssassin's Creed: Forsaken and Miko a century earlier.Assassin's Creed III – A Deadly Performance Arbaaz decided that Jayadeep would, for all intents and purposes, become a ghost to best aid him in his new secret role and thanked Ethan with an embrace.
When the Indian Assassins Ajay and Kulpreet, Jayadeep's former jailers, were attacked by Templar agents, Arbaaz wrote to Ethan to warn him that Jayadeep's mission may have been compromised. However, the message was intercepted by the Templars and Arbaaz's request that Ethan look after his son ultimately became further evidence confirming the London-based Templar Cavanagh's growing suspicions that a man in his employ, Bharat Singh, was an undercover Jayadeep.
Jayadeep survived Cavanagh unraveling the truth but fell into a deep depression when it got his friend Maggie and others under his protection killed. Though Arbaaz and Pyara visited him a year later to help him recover, the relationship between father and son was soured as Jayadeep was uncertain of the role that Arbaaz had played in the arrest and death sentence that had led to his banishment.
==Legacy==
Even during his lifetime, many Assassins regarded Arbaaz Mir as a legendary figure due to his involvement with the Koh-i-Noor and his work dismantling the Templars' influence in India. This was especially apparent among the British Assassins because of Arbaaz's good friend Ethan Frye. Arbaaz was so venerated that, by 1862, Ethan's young daughter Evie studied chronicles of his life, as well as those of other prominent Assassins like Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad, Ezio Auditore, Edward Kenway, and Arno Dorian, all of whom inspired in her a desire to uncover the knowledge held within the Pieces of Eden.Assassin's Creed: Underworld – Chapter 33
Arbaaz eventually became an ancestor of the 21st-century movie actress Monima Das. In 2013, Monima's fiancé Jot Soora became a target of the Templars and the Assassins when they mistakenly believed his DNA was the key to the lost knowledge of the Koh-i-Noor's location. After Jot lied that he was a descendant of Arbaaz and Pyara Kaur due to his insecurities over his actual ancestry, the Assassins abducted him and hooked him up to the Abstergo Industries prototype headset Brahman V.R. to relive Arbaaz's genetic memories and find the Koh-i-Noor.
However, when Jot failed to synchronize with Arbaaz's memories, the Assassins discovered the truth about Jot's ancestry, moments before Templar agents stormed their hideout, having traced the Brahman V.R.'s cloud signal. While Jot managed to escape and went back to Monima, both were later abducted by the Templars in a van. The Assassin Jasdip Dhami rescued Jot, but Monima perished when the van crashed into the Mithi River.
After being taken to another Assassin safehouse, a grieving Jot used the Brahman V.R. to relive Monima's memories, again alerting the Templars to his location, but also informing the Assassins that Monima was Arbaaz and Pyara's descendant that they were looking for. After downloading Monima's memories onto Jot's phone and deleting them from Abstergo's cloud servers to make the trail look like a dead end, the Assassins sent Jot away moments before the Templars attacked again.
In late 2015, due to his involvement with one of the Precursor boxes, Arbaaz's memories were relived through the Helix Navigator by a research analyst at Abstergo Entertainment.Assassin's Creed Chronicles: India
==Personality and traits==
Arbaaz was a laid-back individual who was able to remain calm and make jokes even in the most dangerous situations, in part because of his confidence in his own skills as an Assassin. Due to the nature of his recruitment into the Order, his loyalty to the Creed seemed somewhat secondary, serving the Assassins more so out of a moral obligation to Hamid, who had saved his life, rather than a genuine belief in fighting for humanity's freedom. That being said, he did possess a strong distaste for slavery, as he purchased Raza Soora from Hamid to rescue him from the abuse he faced everyday.
Arbaaz would refuse to carry out missions he personally disagreed with and instead seek to find alternate solutions. When tasked with ensuring Ranjit Singh's safety to prevent the Koh-i-Noor from being stolen by the Templars, he instead sought to steal the diamond himself and allow Singh to be killed by the Templars due to his personal resentment of the man. He could also get easily distracted during his missions, as seen when he chose to follow Pyara rather than attempt to retrieve the Koh-i-Noor.
Because Arbaaz typically worked alone, he was not used to having people accompany him on missions and could become annoyed when his companions slowed him down or disobeyed his orders, as seen with Raza. However, Arbaaz still cared for his servant, as he went out of his way to save him when Raza nearly fell to his death, and planned to free him once their mission was over. He also typically sought to avoid unnecessary bloodshed, trying to reason with Francis Cotton and explain that they were on the same side due to their mutual hatred of Ranjit Singh.
In his later years, Arbaaz appeared to have become more devoted to the Assassin cause and their tenets, being willing to allow his own son to be executed for nearly compromising the Brotherhood, which strained his relationship with both Jayadeep and Pyara. He also expressed disappointment at his son for lacking the instincts of a killer, which in his eyes prevented Jayadeep from becoming a great Assassin. That being said, when Arbaaz and Pyara learned that Jayadeep had fallen into depression, they wasted no time in traveling to London to console him. However, Arbaaz was ultimately unable to mend his relationship with his son, who blamed him for his predicament.
===Skills and equipment===
Trained as a Master Assassin, Arbaaz was an excellent freerunner, able to move on any structure with ease. He was also a skilled swordsman, able to fight multiple soldiers at once, and was further trained in pickpocketing, lockpicking and stealth. He was particularly adept at using disguises to infiltrate restricted areas, posing as a Kashmiri emissary to gain access to the royal palace in Amritsar, and easily blending in with crowds of civilians. Arbaaz also possessed Eagle Vision, an extra-sensory ability which allowed him to read people's intentions and see things that were invisible to most.
In terms of equipment, Arbaaz wielded a sword resembling an , a concealed and , as well as a with rock pellets, chakrams and smoke bombs. Although he did not carry any firearms on his person, he had some experience firing muskets and proved to be a skilled marksman. Additionally, he wielded a unique variation of the Assassins' signature Hidden Blade, known as the "Triden Blade", consisting of a bracer and an outer compartment which could open out to form a three-pronged fork, revealing another blade nestled within.
==Behind the scenes==
Arbaaz Mir is a character first introduced in the 2013 graphic novel Assassin's Creed: Brahman. He made his video game debut in the 2016 spin-off installment Assassin's Creed Chronicles: India, where he was voiced by the British actor Johnny Neal.
Jeffrey Yohalem, the lead writer for Assassin's Creed: Syndicate, has stated that Evie Frye, the wife of Arbaaz and Pyara's only known child Jayadeep, is not an ancestor of Monima Das. from 1:11:42–1:11:48 This implies that either Jayadeep conceived a child with someone other than Evie, or that Arbaaz and Pyara had at least one other child, though there are currently no mentions of Jayadeep having any siblings in the franchise.
===Etymology===
Arbaaz in means 'eagle' while is a clan or tribe between present day India and Pakistan. is also a loanword from the emir, amir, and thus has the meaning of 'leader, commander, prince' in aforementioned places. Indian naming customs vary from region to region in the country. In Kashmir, names often follow the format of a personal name (Arbaaz), an optional middle name, and a family name (Mir).
==Appearances==
*Assassin's Creed: Brahman 
*Assassin's Creed: Syndicate 
**The Last Maharaja 
*Assassin's Creed: Underworld
*Assassin's Creed Chronicles: India
*Assassin's Creed: The Official Collection
==References==
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ru:Арбааз Мир
zh:阿尔巴兹·米尔
Category:19th century births
Category:Individuals
Category:Indians
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Category:Assassins
Category:Indian Assassins
Category:Master Assassins
Category:Individuals who held Pieces of Eden
Category:Individuals with Eagle Vision
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