Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Assassin Legends: Myths of the Isma'ilis

The Assassin Legends: Myths of the Isma'ilis

Daftary, Farhad

Paperback

Mythology & FolkloreGeneral Middle Eastern History

ISBN10: 1850439508
ISBN13: 9781850439509
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Published: Jul 15 1995
Pages: 224
Weight: 0.78
Height: 0.81 Width: 6.10 Depth: 9.24
Language: English

For hundreds of years Westerners have been fascinated by stories of the Assassins, their mysterious leader and their remote mountain stronghold at Alamut in Northern Iran. The legends first emerged in the 12th and 13th centuries, when Crusaders in Syria came into contact with the Nazari Isma'ilis, one of the communities of Shi'ite Islam who, at the behest of their leader Hassan Sabaa (mythologized as the Old Man of the Mountain), engaged in dangerous missions to kill their enemies. Elaborated over the years, the tales culminated in Marco Polo's claim that the Old Man controlled the behaviour of his self-sacrificing devotees through the use of hashish and a secret garden of paradise. So influential were these tales that the word assassin entered European languages as a common noun meaning murderer. Daftary traces the origins and early development of the legends - as well as investigating the historical context in which they were fabricated and transmitted. As such, this book reveals an extraordinary programme of propaganda rooted in the medieval Muslim world and medieval Europe's ignorance of this world.

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