1979); Elizabeth Warnock Fernea, Guests of the Sheik
(New York: Anchor Books, 1995); David Pinault, The
Shiites: Ritual and Popular Piety in a Muslim Community
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992).
Assassins
In the 12th century, Europeans gave the name
Assassins to a group of ruthless killers they had
heard about during their crUsades and travels in
the Middle East. One of the most famous accounts
about them is found in the writings of world trav-
eler Marco Polo (1254–1324). He described the
Assassins as agents recruited by a leader called
Old Man of the Mountain, who kept them drugged
and entertained in hidden gardens patterned after
those of the Islamic paradise as described in the
qUran. When the leader wanted them to do his
bidding, which included the assassination of rul-
ers and officials, he would send them out with the
promise that when they accomplished their tasks
angels would carry them back to paradise as a
reward. By the 14th century, Europeans were using
the term assassin more generally for anyone who
murdered a ruler or high-ranking official, which is
the meaning it still has today. The name is origi-
nally from the Arabic hashishi, someone addicted
to hashish (a narcotic made from Indian hemp).
The actual Assassins, as distinguished from the
ones imaginatively described by Europeans, were
Nizari Isamaili Shia—devoted followers of Hasan-i
Sabbah (d. 1124), a charismatic Shii leader who
announced the coming of a new religious era and
led an upraising against Sunni Muslim rulers in the
Middle East. His trained fighters, who were willing
to sacrifice their lives for him, operated out of for-
tresses in the remote mountains of syria and Persia
(iran), the most famous of which was Alamut,
located in the Elburz Mountains near the Caspian
Sea. These fighters would infiltrate towns and pal-
aces to carry out their assignments, which included
political assassinations as well as other disruptive
actions. They inspired fear and hatred in the hearts
of Sunni authorities, who were also contending
with European crusader armies in Syria and Pales-
tine at that time. Sunnis usually called the Nizaris
“apostates,” but they also tried to insult them by
calling them hashishis. Legends about the Assas-
sins began to circulate among European crusaders
and travelers in the Middle East at this time. The
Mongols from the steppes of Central Asia finally
put an end to Nizari rule in Persia in 1256, and the
mamlUk rulers of egypt did the same in Syria by- The violent activities of the Assassins ceased,
and the history of the Nizari branch of Islam took a
different turn as its members retreated from politics
and killing to live more peacefully in widely scat-
tered communities where some followed the path
of sUFism and engaged in new missionary activities,
especially in Persia and india.
See also aga khan; apostasy; Fatimid dynasty;
fidai; ismaili shiism.
Further reading: Farhad Daftary, The Ismailis: Their
History and Doctrines (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1990); Bernard Lewis, The Assassins: A
Radical Sect in Islam (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1967).Ataturk, Mustafa Kemal (1881–1938)
founder and first president of the modern
Republic of Turkey
Mustafa Kemal was born in Salonica, then part
of the Ottoman Empire. He attended military
schools in the Balkans, where Greek and Slavic
nationalist movements were active, and went
on to graduate from the military academy in
istanbUl, the Ottoman capital. During his early
military appointments, he worked to organize
opposition to the despotism of the Ottoman
sUlta n Abdulhamid, though he was not directly
involved in the Young Turk revolution of 1908.
He gained military fame as commander of the
Turkish troops that repelled the invasion of Allied
forces at Gallipoli in 1915.
Dissatisfied with the Ottoman regime’s compli-
ance with the British, who occupied Istanbul afterK 68 Assassins