The Assassins (Hassan-i Sabbah and the Nizari Isma’ilis): The 900-Year Troll – Research Compilation

Status: COMPLETE (compiled 2026-02-20)

NOTE ON COVERAGE

This dossier covers Hassan-i Sabbah’s theological and revolutionary career, the seizure of Alamut fortress, the assassination strategy and its strategic logic, the “Nothing is true, everything is permitted” phrase and its 900-year journey through fiction and philosophy, the Orientalist myths demolished by Farhad Daftary, the Mongol destruction, and the modern Nizari Isma’ili community’s transformation into one of the most progressive Muslim communities on earth. The emphasis throughout is on the trolling argument: that Hassan-i Sabbah proved a small group with commitment could resist a vast empire; that Western legends about the Assassins became a troll more powerful than anything the historical Assassins actually did; and that a probably-fabricated deathbed quote became the founding axiom of chaos magick 900 years after it was supposedly uttered. This file supports Chapter 18 (Chaos Magick – “Nothing is true, everything is permitted”), connects to Chapter 5 (Sufi Trolls of Islam), Chapter 7 (Templars – myth outlasting reality), and the “technology of belief” thread throughout the book.

I. HASSAN-I SABBAH (c. 1050-1124): THE THEOLOGIAN WHO BUILT A STATE FROM A CLIFF

Biography

Hassan-i Sabbah (also rendered Hasan-e Sabbah, Hasan bin Sabbah, or Hasan I of Alamut) was born around 1050 CE in Qom, Persia (modern Iran), into a Twelver Shi’ite family (Encyclopaedia Iranica). His father, Ali bin Muhammad bin Ja’far, had come from Kufa in Iraq and claimed Yemeni Arab ancestry, though the family had been settled in Persia for generations (Wikipedia).

Hassan received a rigorous education in theology, philosophy, mathematics, and astronomy. He later described studying alongside Nizam al-Mulk (the future grand vizier of the Seljuk Empire) and Omar Khayyam (the future poet-mathematician) under the same teacher, though this story – presented by the chronicler Rashid al-Din – is considered legendary rather than historical by modern scholars including Farhad Daftary (Encyclopaedia Iranica). The tale served a narrative purpose: the three friends who took different paths – the politician, the poet, and the revolutionary.

What is established: Hassan was deeply learned. He knew the Quran by heart, could quote extensively from the texts of most Muslim schools, and was well-versed in philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, and alchemy. He was not a wild-eyed fanatic. He was a trained theologian who arrived at revolutionary conclusions.

Conversion to Isma’ili Islam

The pivotal event: Hassan’s conversion from Twelver to Isma’ili Shi’ism in the 1070s. The Isma’ilis were followers of a different line of succession from the Prophet Muhammad, tracing the legitimate Imamate through Isma’il ibn Jafar rather than through the line recognized by the Twelvers. The Isma’ili movement had its own intellectual tradition, its own theology, and – crucially – its own sense of being a persecuted truth struggling against illegitimate power.

Hassan traveled widely in pursuit of Isma’ili knowledge:

• He spent time in Isfahan, studying under Isma’ili teachers.
• He traveled to Fatimid Cairo (c. 1078), the seat of the Isma’ili Fatimid Caliphate, where he deepened his theological education. He stayed approximately three years.
• He supported the claim of Imam Nizar, eldest son of the Fatimid Imam-Caliph al-Mustansir, as the rightful successor to the Imamate – a position that put him at odds with the Fatimid regime itself when a different son, al-Musta’li, was installed after a palace coup (Encyclopaedia Iranica).

This last point is critical: Hassan’s movement was not a rebellion against Islam. It was a dispute about legitimate succession – about who had the right to lead the community of the faithful. The Nizari Isma’ilis believed they were fighting for the true Imam against usurpers. This is a theological argument, not nihilism.

The “New Preaching” (al-da’wa al-jadida)

Hassan developed what outsiders called the “new preaching” (al-da’wa al-jadida), in contrast to the “old preaching” (al-da’wa al-qadima) of the Cairo-based Fatimid Isma’ilis. In reality, this was less a new doctrine than a vigorous restatement of the established Shi’ite concept of ta’lim (authoritative instruction) – the principle that the community requires a living, divinely guided Imam to interpret the faith (Institute of Ismaili Studies).

Hassan articulated this position in a Persian treatise called Chahār Fasl (“The Four Chapters,” Arabic: al-Fusul al-arba’a). The original text has not survived, but its arguments are preserved fragmentarily in the writings of contemporaries, including the great Islamic scholar Abu’l-Fath al-Shahrastani (d. 1153) (Institute of Ismaili Studies).

The argument was intellectual, not merely violent. Hassan was making a case – about authority, about interpretation, about the necessity of the Imam. The Western image of the Assassins as mindless killers driven by drugs omits the fact that their founder was a philosopher who wrote treatises.

II. THE SEIZURE OF ALAMUT (1090): THE FORTRESS TAKEN WITHOUT A SWORD

The Fortress

Alamut (meaning “Eagle’s Nest” in the local Daylami dialect, or possibly “Eagle’s Teaching”) was a mountain fortress in the Rudbar region of Daylam in the Alborz Mountains of northern Persia (modern Qazvin Province, Iran). Perched at approximately 2,100 meters (6,900 feet) above sea level on a narrow ridge, it was considered virtually impregnable. The castle commanded the surrounding valley and controlled a strategic route through the mountains.

The Takeover: September 4, 1090

Hassan’s seizure of Alamut is one of the most remarkable military operations in medieval history – because it was barely military at all.

The method:

1. Phase One – Conversion: Hassan first sent his da’is (missionaries) and rafiks (companions/agents) to the villages surrounding Alamut. They preached the Isma’ili message and converted the local populace.
2. Phase Two – Infiltration: Key individuals within the fortress garrison were converted to the Isma’ili cause. These converts secured positions of trust within the castle.
3. Phase Three – Takeover: On September 4, 1090, the converted members of the garrison facilitated Hassan’s entrance into the fortress. The takeover was accomplished with minimal or no violence – the garrison’s loyalty had already been subverted from within (Wikipedia).
4. The payment: Hassan reportedly paid the fortress’s previous commander, a Seljuk vassal named Mahdi, 3,000 gold dinars in compensation after the takeover – money delivered through an intermediary (Wikipedia). He didn’t massacre the garrison. He bought the castle out from under the empire that owned it.

FOR THE BOOK’S ARGUMENT: Hassan took an impregnable fortress without a siege, without an army, without bloodshed. He did it with words. Missionaries converted the villagers; the villagers converted the garrison; the garrison opened the gates. This is social engineering on a medieval scale. It is also – in the book’s framework – a troll. The Seljuk Empire had armies numbering in the hundreds of thousands. Hassan proved that belief, properly deployed, was worth more than all of them.

The Network of Fortresses

After Alamut, Hassan’s movement seized or built a network of mountain fortresses across Persia and Syria:

• Persia: Alamut served as the headquarters, but the Nizaris controlled numerous strongholds in the Alborz and other mountain regions, including Lamasar (Lanbasar), Maymundiz, Girdkuh, and others.
• Syria: A separate Nizari organization operated in the Jabal Ansariyya (Nusayriyya Mountains) of Syria, with strongholds including Masyaf (the most famous Syrian fortress, later commanded by Rashid al-Din Sinan, the “Old Man of the Mountain” of Crusader legend), Kahf, Khawabi, Qadmus, and Maniqa (Wikipedia).

The strategy was consistent: mountain fortresses that conventional armies could not easily besiege, supported by local populations converted to the Isma’ili cause. It was a distributed, networked resistance – less a state than a constellation of defended positions linked by shared belief.

Alamut as Intellectual Center

Alamut was not merely a military stronghold. Hassan established it as a center of learning:

• He founded an important library whose collections of manuscripts and scientific instruments grew to impressive proportions over the next 166 years.
• The fortress housed observatories for astronomical study.
• Philosophers, scientists, and theologians debated in intellectual freedom.
• The fortress complex included extensive irrigation and cultivation improvements, making the valley self-sufficient in food production.

The Western myth of Alamut: a den of hashish-crazed killers. The historical reality: a fortified university with gardens, libraries, and observatories, commanded by a theologian who spent his time reading and writing.

Hassan’s Personal Asceticism

Hassan-i Sabbah lived at Alamut for approximately 34 years (1090-1124) and, according to Persian historians, never descended from the castle during that entire period. Some accounts say he left his personal quarters only twice, and then only to ascend to the roof.

He spent his time reading, writing, and administering his growing movement. He lived with extreme austerity – no luxury, no indulgence. He reportedly had one of his own sons executed for drinking wine, and another executed for an unauthorized killing. The discipline was absolute, starting with himself.

He died in June 1124 (Encyclopaedia Iranica), at approximately ninety years of age. His movement survived him by 132 years.

III. THE ASSASSINATION STRATEGY

Targeted Killing as Doctrine

The Nizari Isma’ilis developed targeted assassination as a strategic instrument – not mass violence, not conventional warfare, but the precise elimination of specific individuals. This was a deliberate strategic choice, not mere terrorism.

The logic:

• The Nizaris were vastly outnumbered by the Seljuk Empire. Conventional battle was suicide.
• A single killing of a key leader could achieve more strategic disruption than a battle involving thousands of troops.
• The public, theatrical nature of the killings – carried out in markets, mosques, and courts, in broad daylight, with witnesses – maximized the psychological impact.
• The willingness to die demonstrated a level of commitment that demoralized enemies far beyond the tactical significance of any individual killing.

The Fida’i (Self-Sacrificers)

The agents who carried out the killings were called fida’iyin (singular: fida’i), meaning “self-sacrificers” or “those who sacrifice themselves.” They were the lowest-ranking members of the Nizari hierarchy – young men who had undergone extensive training and who accepted that their missions were one-way.

Key characteristics:

• Training: The fida’iyin underwent rigorous preparation, including weapons training, language study, and – crucially – immersion in the culture and habits of their targets, so they could operate undetected.
• Disguise: They frequently disguised themselves as Sufi mystics, merchants, or monks – figures who could move through society without arousing suspicion. The two fida’iyin who killed Conrad of Montferrat were disguised as Christian monks.
• No escape: The fida’iyin typically made no attempt to flee after a killing. They expected to die. This was part of the message: we cannot be deterred by the threat of death, because we do not fear it. Some accounts suggest they waited calmly after the killing to be seized and executed.
• The theatrical element: The killings were performed in public spaces with maximum visibility. This was not covert assassination in the modern intelligence-agency sense. It was performative violence – killing as communication. The message was directed not at the victim (who was dead) but at the victim’s allies and successors: you are not safe anywhere.

Notable Assassinations

Nizam al-Mulk (October 14, 1092):

• Target: Abu Ali al-Hasan ibn Ali al-Tusi, known as Nizam al-Mulk (“Order of the Realm”) – the grand vizier of the Seljuk Empire and the most powerful administrator in the Islamic world. He had served the Seljuk sultans for twenty years and was, in practical terms, the ruler of the empire.
• Method: A fida’i disguised as a Sufi mystic (or, in some accounts, a petitioner) approached Nizam al-Mulk’s litter as he traveled between Isfahan and Baghdad. The assassin stabbed him with a knife. Nizam al-Mulk died shortly after (Britannica).
• Significance: This was the first major Nizari assassination and arguably the most consequential. The killing destabilized the Seljuk Empire at a critical moment – Sultan Malik-Shah I himself died just weeks later (November 1092), triggering a succession crisis (Britannica). The Seljuk Empire fractured into competing factions, buying the Nizari state decades of breathing room.
• The strategic calculation: One man with a knife removed the administrator holding together the largest empire in the Islamic world. The empire’s subsequent fragmentation proved Hassan’s thesis: a system dependent on a single irreplaceable individual is vulnerable to a single irreplaceable act.

Conrad of Montferrat (April 28, 1192):

• Target: Conrad I of Montferrat, recently elected King of Jerusalem during the Third Crusade. One of the most powerful Crusader leaders, he had just been chosen to replace Guy of Lusignan.
• Method: Two fida’iyin disguised as Christian monks stabbed Conrad in the streets of Tyre (modern Lebanon). He died of his wounds (Wikipedia).
• The mystery: Who ordered the killing remains debated. The Syrian Nizaris (under Rashid al-Din Sinan) carried it out, but theories about the commissioning party include Saladin (who would benefit from Crusader disunity), Richard I of England (who supported Guy of Lusignan’s claim to the throne), and an internal Nizari strategic calculation (Wikipedia).
• Significance for the Crusades: The killing threw the Crusader states into political turmoil at a pivotal moment. Conrad had been king for only days.

Other notable targets:

• Multiple Seljuk governors and military commanders across Persia.
• The Fatimid vizier al-Afdal (1121) – killed by Nizari agents, demonstrating that the movement would strike even against other Isma’ilis who had usurped the rightful Imam’s succession (Wikipedia).
• Attempts (some successful, some not) against Crusader leaders in Syria.

The Strategic Logic

The assassination strategy was not random terror. It followed a coherent logic:

1. Economy of force: One trained agent with a dagger could achieve effects that would require thousands of conventional troops.
2. Deterrence through commitment: The willingness of the fida’iyin to die demonstrated a depth of conviction that no amount of conventional military power could match. Legends grew that the Assassins could reach anyone, anywhere – and this legend was itself a weapon, deterring attacks on Nizari communities.
3. Targeted disruption: By removing key individuals – the administrator, the general, the king – the Nizaris could disrupt entire power structures without the resources needed for conventional warfare.
4. Psychological warfare: The public nature of the killings and the fida’iyin’s calm acceptance of death created a psychological impact far exceeding the tactical significance of any single killing. The fear of assassination was more powerful than assassination itself.
5. Defense, not conquest: The Nizaris never attempted to conquer territory through assassination. The strategy was defensive – protecting Nizari communities and fortresses by making it too costly for enemies to attack. A Seljuk governor who knew the Nizaris could reach him in his own palace might decide that leaving Alamut alone was the wiser course.

FOR THE BOOK’S ARGUMENT: Hassan-i Sabbah invented asymmetric warfare as information warfare. The killings were real, but their primary function was communicative – they sent a message. The message was: “You cannot protect yourself from people who do not fear death.” This is trolling at the geopolitical level. The Seljuk Empire had armies of hundreds of thousands. Hassan had a network of committed believers and a mountain fortress. He won – not by defeating the empire, but by making the empire decide he wasn’t worth the trouble of defeating. The troll doesn’t have to win the fight. The troll has to make the fight not worth having.

IV. “NOTHING IS TRUE, EVERYTHING IS PERMITTED”: THE 900-YEAR JOURNEY OF A FABRICATED QUOTE

The Attribution to Hassan-i Sabbah

The phrase “Nothing is true, everything is permitted” is widely attributed to Hassan-i Sabbah as his last words before dying in 1124.

The problem: There is no credible primary source for this attribution. No medieval Islamic chronicle records these as Hassan’s dying words. The phrase does not appear in any Isma’ili text. It is, in all probability, apocryphal.

The phrase’s actual genealogy involves a 900-year game of telephone through philosophy, fiction, and counterculture:

Step 1: Nietzsche (1887)

The phrase – or something close to it – appears to have entered Western consciousness through Friedrich Nietzsche, who included a version in On the Genealogy of Morals (1887). In Essay III, Section 24, Nietzsche discusses the Assassins in passing and attributes to them a formulation suggesting that “nothing is true” and therefore “everything is permitted” (Wikipedia). Nietzsche was drawing on Orientalist legends about the Assassins that had circulated in European literature for centuries, not on any authentic Isma’ili source.

Step 2: Vladimir Bartol’s “Alamut” (1938)

Vladimir Bartol (1903-1967), a Slovenian novelist, published the novel Alamut in 1938 (Wikipedia). The book reimagines the founding of the Nizari Isma’ili movement, telling the story through the perspectives of Halima (a young enslaved woman) and Ibn Tahir (a naive warrior).

The novel’s central maxim, delivered by its fictionalized Hassan-i Sabbah: “Nothing is an absolute reality, all is permitted” (Nič ni resnično, vse je dovoljeno in Slovenian).

• Context of composition: Bartol wrote the novel as an allegorical critique of fascism. He was inspired by the assassination of King Alexander I of Yugoslavia in 1934 by Balkan nationalists reportedly commissioned by Mussolini’s agents, and by the ethnic persecution of Slovenians by Italian fascists in Trieste, his hometown (Wikipedia). The “Assassins” in the novel are a mirror for 1930s totalitarianism – a critique of how charismatic leaders manipulate believers.
• Reception: Alamut was initially published in a small Slovenian edition and received modest attention. It gained wider readership only after being translated into other languages decades later.

Step 3: William S. Burroughs (1959)

William S. Burroughs (1914-1997) (Wikipedia) recast the phrase as “Nothing is true, everything is permitted” – the phrasing that would become canonical. Burroughs used the phrase in several works, most notably in his essay/routine “The Last Words of Hassan Sabbah” and in The Naked Lunch (1959) and Nova Express (1964) (University of Delaware Library).

Burroughs was drawn to the Assassin legend as a model for his concept of liberation from control systems – the idea that language, media, and social structures are mechanisms of control that must be disrupted. For Burroughs, “nothing is true” meant: all received narratives are fabrications. “Everything is permitted” meant: you are free to construct your own.

It is unclear whether Burroughs drew directly from Bartol’s novel or from the same Orientalist-Nietzschean tradition that Bartol had drawn from. The phrase was in the air.

Step 4: Peter Carroll and Chaos Magick (1978-1987)

Peter Carroll adopted “Nothing is true, everything is permitted” as a founding axiom of chaos magick in Liber Null & Psychonaut (1987, collecting material from 1978 onward) (Wikipedia).

Carroll’s interpretation: if no single belief system possesses absolute truth, then all belief systems are equally available as tools. Belief is a technology. You can adopt a belief, use it for a specific purpose, and discard it when it’s no longer useful. Invoke Jesus on Monday and Kali on Tuesday – if it works, it’s valid.

This is a radical epistemological claim dressed in occult language. It is also the logical endpoint of the esoteric tradition’s four-thousand-year arc: if the Hermeticists showed that fake ancient texts have real effects, and the Gnostics showed that the establishment’s “truth” is a prison, then chaos magick shows that ALL belief systems are tools rather than truths. The Assassin’s (fabricated) motto becomes the chaos magician’s operating principle.

Step 5: Assassin’s Creed (2007-present)

The video game franchise Assassin’s Creed (Ubisoft, first release 2007) adopted the phrase as its central motto, spoken by the fictional Assassin Brotherhood: “Nothing is true, everything is permitted.” (Wikipedia)

• The franchise has sold over 200 million copies as of 2024 (TweakTown).
• The phrase is now known to hundreds of millions of people worldwide who have never heard of Hassan-i Sabbah, Vladimir Bartol, William Burroughs, or Peter Carroll.
• The game’s fictionalized Assassins bear essentially no resemblance to the historical Nizari Isma’ilis. They are secular freedom fighters opposing a conspiracy of religious tyrants (the Templars) – a complete inversion of the actual historical relationship, where the Nizaris were devout believers fighting for what they considered the true Imam.

The 900-Year Genealogy

FOR THE BOOK’S ARGUMENT: A man who probably never said the phrase has had it attributed to him for 900 years. A Slovenian novelist used it to critique fascism. A Beat writer used it to critique control systems. A British magician used it to found a new magical tradition. A French-Canadian game studio used it to sell 200 million copies of a video game. The quote’s truth is irrelevant. Its effects are real. This is the entire thesis of this book compressed into a single sentence and its afterlife. Nothing is true. Everything is permitted. And the fabrication is more powerful than the fact.

V. LEGENDS VS. REALITY: THE ORIENTALIST MYTH

Marco Polo’s “Garden of Paradise”

The most famous legend about the Assassins comes from Marco Polo’s account in Il Milione (The Travels of Marco Polo, c. 1300). Polo – who traveled through Persia in the 1270s, two decades after Alamut’s destruction – described the “Old Man of the Mountain” as follows (Wikipedia):

• The Old Man maintained a secret garden constructed to resemble the Paradise described in the Quran, complete with streams of wine, milk, and honey, and populated by beautiful young women.
• Young men selected as future assassins were drugged with hashish and brought into the garden while unconscious. They awoke believing they were in Paradise.
• After being allowed to enjoy the garden, they were drugged again and returned to normal quarters. They were then told that the Old Man had the power to send them back to Paradise – but only if they carried out his orders unto death.
• Thus motivated by the promise of eternal Paradise, the young men became willing suicide operatives.

Why It’s Almost Certainly Fabricated

Farhad Daftary, in The Assassin Legends: Myths of the Isma’ilis (1994), systematically demolished the garden myth (Open Library):

1. Marco Polo never visited Alamut. He passed through the region decades after the Mongols had destroyed it. His account is based on local legends and hearsay, not firsthand observation.
2. No Isma’ili source mentions a garden of paradise. The legend appears exclusively in hostile external sources – Sunni Muslim polemicists and European Crusader chronicles, both of whom had strong motivation to demonize the Nizaris.
3. The logistics are absurd. Building and maintaining a hidden paradise garden on a narrow mountain ridge at 6,900 feet elevation in the Alborz Mountains strains credulity. Alamut had gardens – impressive ones, with sophisticated irrigation – but they were agricultural, not recreational.
4. The drugging narrative contradicts the evidence. The fida’iyin’s effectiveness depended on extended infiltration of target environments – sometimes months or years of living undercover. This requires sustained clarity, discipline, and intelligence. Hashish-addled automatons could not have carried out the operations the historical record documents.
5. The legend served the enemies’ purposes. By attributing the fida’iyin’s commitment to drugs and deception rather than genuine belief, hostile accounts avoided the more troubling implication: that these young men acted out of sincere religious conviction. The drug story was more comfortable for the Assassins’ enemies than the alternative.

The Word “Assassin”

The English word “assassin” derives from “hashishin” (Arabic: hashashiyyin), meaning “users of hashish.” (Etymonline)

The key point: This was an enemy’s slur, not a self-description. The Nizari Isma’ilis never called themselves “Assassins” or “hashishin.” The term was applied by Sunni Muslim polemicists – primarily the historian Abu Shama and the writer Ibn al-Athir – as a term of abuse, implying that the Nizaris’ religious convictions were not genuine but were drug-induced (Wikipedia).

The term entered European languages through Crusader chronicles. The earliest known European use is in a letter by the Bishop of Acre (1236). By the late medieval period, “assassin” had become a common noun in French, Italian, and English meaning simply “murderer” – completely detached from its original sectarian context.

FOR THE BOOK’S ARGUMENT: The Nizaris’ enemies named them, just as the Plymouth Brethren named Crowley “the Beast.” In both cases, the enemy’s label outlasted the reality. The Nizaris called themselves Isma’ilis – followers of the Imam. Their enemies called them drug-addled murderers. Guess which name stuck for 900 years? The slur became the legend. The legend became the myth. The myth became a word in every European language. The enemy’s troll was more durable than the movement itself.

The Real Nizari Isma’ilis

Daftary’s scholarship reveals a sophisticated theological and intellectual movement, not a cult of drugged killers:

• Libraries: Alamut’s library was renowned. It contained manuscripts on theology, philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, and medicine. When the Mongols destroyed it, the chronicler Juvayni was permitted to salvage some works before the rest was burned – meaning even the Mongols recognized its scholarly value.
• Observatories: Alamut and other Nizari fortresses contained astronomical observatories. The Nizaris contributed to Islamic astronomy during a period of significant advancement in the field.
• Philosophical texts: The Nizari tradition produced significant theological and philosophical writings. Nasir al-Din al-Tusi (1201-1274), one of the greatest Islamic scholars of the medieval period, spent years living and working at Nizari fortresses before the Mongol conquest (Britannica).
• Theological debate: The Nizari communities fostered internal theological discussion and debate. They were not a monolithic cult but a diverse intellectual tradition with internal disagreements and developments.
• Agricultural innovation: The Nizari fortress communities developed sophisticated irrigation and agricultural systems to sustain themselves in mountain environments.

VI. THE DESTRUCTION

The Mongol Conquest (1256)

The Nizari Isma’ili state endured for 166 years (1090-1256) before being destroyed by the Mongol Empire.

Hulagu Khan (c. 1217-1265), grandson of Genghis Khan, was dispatched westward by the Great Khan Mongke with orders to destroy the Nizari state and then conquer the Abbasid Caliphate in Baghdad (Wikipedia).

The campaign:

• Mongol advance (1256): Hulagu’s army – estimates range from 100,000 to 200,000 soldiers – advanced on the Nizari fortresses in Persia.
• Capitulation: The last Nizari lord of Alamut, Rukn al-Din Khurshah, chose to surrender rather than resist the overwhelming Mongol force. He descended from Alamut and submitted to Hulagu in November 1256 (Wikipedia).
• Destruction of Alamut: The Mongols entered the fortress in December 1256. They systematically dismantled the fortifications (Wikipedia).
• The library’s fate: The Mongol chronicler Ata-Malik Juvayni (who accompanied Hulagu and later wrote Ta’rikh-i Jahan-gusha, “The History of the World-Conqueror”) was permitted to explore Alamut’s library. He selected works he deemed worth saving – copies of the Quran, astronomical instruments and treatises, and some Isma’ili texts. The rest was burned. One hundred and sixty-six years of accumulated scholarship, gone in a day.
• The massacres: Following the capture of the Isma’ili garrisons, the Mongols carried out widespread massacres. Estimates suggest that approximately 100,000 Isma’ilis perished in the slaughter that followed the surrender of the fortresses.
• Rukn al-Din’s fate: After being used to persuade other Nizari fortresses to surrender, Rukn al-Din was sent to the Mongol capital, Karakorum, where the Great Khan Mongke refused to grant him audience. He was killed on the return journey.

The Syrian Fortresses

The Syrian Nizari fortresses held out longer. Masyaf and other strongholds were not captured until the Mamluk Sultan Baybars forced their submission in 1270-1273, more than a decade after the fall of Alamut (Wikipedia). The Syrian Nizaris eventually became subjects of the Mamluk state, losing their political independence but maintaining their religious identity.

The Underground Survival

The destruction of the Nizari state did not destroy the Nizari community. Survivors went underground, practicing taqiyya (dissimulation) – hiding their true religious identity to survive in hostile environments. For centuries, Nizari communities persisted across Persia, Central Asia, Syria, and the Indian subcontinent, maintaining their faith in secret.

VII. THE MODERN NIZARI ISMA’ILIS

The Aga Khan

The Nizari Isma’ili Imams eventually emerged from concealment. In the nineteenth century, the Imam assumed the title Aga Khan (a Turkish honorific meaning “Master Commander”), granted by the Shah of Persia.

• Aga Khan I (Hasan Ali Shah, 1804-1881): Fled Persia after a failed rebellion and settled in British India, where the community established itself under British protection (Wikipedia).
• Aga Khan III (Sultan Muhammad Shah, 1877-1957): Led the community through the first half of the twentieth century. Known for his diplomatic career (president of the League of Nations Assembly, 1937) and his modernization of the Isma’ili community (Britannica).
• Aga Khan IV (Prince Shah Karim al-Hussaini, 1936-2025): Led the community for nearly 68 years (1957-2025) (Institute of Ismaili Studies). Founded the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN), one of the largest private development networks in the world, operating in education, health, architecture, media, economic development, and cultural preservation across Asia, Africa, and the Middle East (Aga Khan Development Network).
• Aga Khan V (Prince Shah Rahim al-Hussaini): Acceded to the Imamate on February 4, 2025, upon the death of his father (Institute of Ismaili Studies).

The Modern Community

The Nizari Isma’ilis today number approximately 12-15 million people worldwide, with significant populations in:

• South Asia: Pakistan, India, Bangladesh
• Central Asia: Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan
• Middle East: Syria, Iran
• East Africa: Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda
• Western diaspora: Canada, United Kingdom, United States, Portugal

The community is characterized by:

• Pluralism and tolerance: The Isma’ilis emphasize interfaith dialogue, religious pluralism, and engagement across differences.
• Education: The Aga Khan network operates universities, schools, and educational programs across the developing world.
• Development work: The AKDN’s annual development budget exceeds $1 billion, funding hospitals, schools, cultural restoration (including the restoration of historic sites in Cairo, Delhi, and Kabul), and economic development programs.
• Progressivism: The Isma’ili community emphasizes women’s education, democratic participation within community governance, and adaptation of religious practice to contemporary contexts.

FOR THE BOOK’S ARGUMENT: The ultimate distance from “assassin” to the modern reality is almost beyond comprehension. A community that Western legend associates with hashish, murder, and fanaticism is, in reality, one of the most progressive, education-focused, development-oriented Muslim communities on earth. The Aga Khan Development Network builds schools and hospitals. The community emphasizes pluralism, women’s education, and interfaith dialogue. The word “assassin” – their enemies’ slur – entered every European language as a synonym for “murderer.” The community itself became a synonym for peaceful development. The 900-year gap between the legend and the reality is itself the final troll: the enemies’ myth won the name game, but the community won the actual game.

VIII. THE TROLLING ARGUMENT

Trolling the Seljuk Empire

Hassan-i Sabbah trolled the largest empire in the Islamic world by proving its fundamental vulnerability: a system dependent on irreplaceable individuals can be disrupted by people willing to die. The Seljuk Empire had armies of hundreds of thousands. Hassan had a mountaintop, a library, and a network of true believers. The empire could not destroy him. Not because he was militarily superior – he wasn’t – but because the cost of trying to destroy him was always higher than the cost of leaving him alone.

This is the logic of the troll. The troll does not need to win. The troll needs to make the fight not worth having. Hassan did this for 34 years from a single room in a mountain fortress, and his movement survived him by 132 more.

The Western Myth as a 900-Year Troll

The historical Nizari Isma’ilis were destroyed in 1256. The legend of the Assassins is still running in 2026.

The enemies of the Nizaris – Sunni polemicists, Crusader chroniclers, Marco Polo – created a myth: drug-crazed killers controlled by an evil sorcerer in a mountain fortress with a fake Paradise. This myth was more durable than the Nizari state itself. It has persisted for 900 years, entering European languages as a common noun, inspiring novels, philosophical treatises, countercultural movements, and one of the bestselling video game franchises in history.

The irony: the myth was created to delegitimize the Nizaris. It was enemy propaganda. But the myth outlived the propaganda purpose and became something else entirely – a symbol of radical freedom, of resistance to authority, of the power of committed individuals against vast institutions. The enemies’ troll escaped their control and became a different kind of troll – one that now serves purposes its creators would be horrified by.

“Nothing Is True, Everything Is Permitted” – Chaos Magick 900 Years Early

If we take the phrase at face value – regardless of whether Hassan ever said it – it articulates the core insight of chaos magick nine centuries before Peter Carroll formalized it:

• “Nothing is true”: No single belief system possesses absolute truth. All theological, philosophical, and political frameworks are constructions. This is, incidentally, a defensible reading of certain strands of Isma’ili theology, which emphasized the esoteric (batin) meaning behind the exoteric (zahir) surface of all religious texts.
• “Everything is permitted”: If no truth is absolute, then the practitioner is free to adopt whatever framework serves the moment. Belief is instrumental, not ontological.

Whether Hassan meant this, or whether the phrase is an invention of Nietzsche, Bartol, Burroughs, and Carroll doesn’t matter. The phrase works. It has done work in the world for at least 137 years (since Nietzsche) and arguably for 900 (if the attribution has any basis). A fabricated quote from a medieval theologian became the operating principle of a late-twentieth-century magical movement and the catchphrase of a billion-dollar video game franchise.

The Assassins understood the technology of belief before anyone named it. Or, more precisely: the legend of the Assassins understood it. And since the legend is more real than the history – since more people know “Nothing is true, everything is permitted” than know anything about Isma’ili theology – the legend IS the technology. The fabrication is more powerful than the fact. Nothing is true. Everything is permitted. Q.E.D.

IX. ACADEMIC SOURCES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Scholarship

• Farhad Daftary, The Assassin Legends: Myths of the Isma’ilis (I.B. Tauris, 1994) – The definitive demolition of the Orientalist myths. Traces the origins and transmission of the legends and reveals the propaganda program behind them. Essential.
• Farhad Daftary, The Isma’ilis: Their History and Doctrines (Cambridge University Press, 1990; 2nd edition 2007) – The comprehensive scholarly history of the Isma’ili movement. The standard academic reference.
• Farhad Daftary, A Short History of the Ismailis (Edinburgh University Press, 1998) – Accessible overview for non-specialists.
• Bernard Lewis, The Assassins: A Radical Sect in Islam (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1967) – An earlier scholarly treatment. Lewis was a distinguished historian but his work reflects an Orientalist framework that Daftary has substantially revised. Still valuable for the medieval sources it presents, but should be read alongside Daftary.
• Marshall G. S. Hodgson, The Order of Assassins: The Struggle of the Early Nizari Isma’ilis Against the Islamic World (Mouton, 1955) – A pioneering academic study that treated the Nizaris seriously as a political and theological movement. Predates Daftary’s work by four decades.

The Literary and Philosophical Transmission

• Vladimir Bartol, Alamut (1938; English translation by Michael Biggins, Scala House Press, 2004) – The novel that crystallized the phrase. Written as anti-fascist allegory.
• Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals (1887) – Essay III, Section 24, where the Assassin motto enters European philosophy.
• William S. Burroughs, The Naked Lunch (1959) and “The Last Words of Hassan Sabbah” – The Beat writer who gave the phrase its canonical English form.
• Peter Carroll, Liber Null & Psychonaut (1987) – The chaos magick text that adopted the phrase as a founding axiom.

Medieval Sources

• Ata-Malik Juvayni, Ta’rikh-i Jahan-gusha (The History of the World-Conqueror, c. 1260) – The Mongol chronicler who witnessed Alamut’s fall and explored its library before its destruction.
• Rashid al-Din Tabib, Jami al-Tawarikh (Compendium of Chronicles, c. 1307) – The Ilkhanid historian whose account includes the (probably legendary) story of Hassan, Nizam al-Mulk, and Omar Khayyam as schoolfellows.
• Marco Polo, Il Milione (The Travels of Marco Polo, c. 1300) – The source of the garden of paradise legend.
• Abu’l-Fath al-Shahrastani, Kitab al-Milal wa al-Nihal (Book of Sects and Creeds, c. 1127) – Contemporary Islamic scholar who preserved fragments of Hassan’s theological arguments.

Modern Context

• Aga Khan Development Network (akdn.org) – Documentation of the modern Isma’ili community’s development work.
• The Institute of Ismaili Studies (iis.ac.uk) – Academic institution dedicated to Isma’ili scholarship, founded by Aga Khan IV.

X. KEY DATES

XI. KEY QUOTES

• “Nothing is true, everything is permitted.” – attributed to Hassan-i Sabbah (probably apocryphal; canonical English form via Burroughs)
• “Nothing is an absolute reality, all is permitted.” – Vladimir Bartol, Alamut (1938)
• “Hassan-i Sabbah…an organiser and a political strategist of the highest calibre…at the same time a trained theologian.” – Institute of Ismaili Studies
• “The legends first emerged in the 12th and 13th centuries, when Crusaders in Syria came into contact with the Nizari Isma’ilis…” – Farhad Daftary, The Assassin Legends

XII. CONNECTIONS TO OTHER RESEARCH FILES

Source URLs

• Assassins — Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Bernard Lewis, The Assassins: A Radical Sect in Islam (1967)
• Farhad Daftary, The Assassin Legends (1994)
• Hassan-i Sabbah — Wikipedia
• Ismaili Studies — Institute of Ismaili Studies