What did this man look like, I asked myself. We are particular that all those who find a place in our minds, even those whom we have never met, should have a face. We are forever giving faces to God even as we declare that he cannot have one. Even the blind, it is believed, conjure some shapes in their dark world to identify people around them. Hasan had sat before me for a total of about eight days in four separate segments of time. And he had left no trace in my mind. However, my obstinate brain had assigned to him a form, most likely bearing no relationship to memory or reality, since that seventh of July, and it was like this: a tall, hefty, fair figure of Persian-Afghan descent, slightly reddish hair and moustache, eyes wide enough but not sharp, a pleasant grin revealing yellowish teeth … Something at the back of my mind told me I would not be meeting him again, even though he now appeared to be alive. He has somehow entered an area outside my field of vision and could communicate only by way of letters and phone calls. An invisible but omnipresent place, somewhat like history, from where he cannot return. He might still have methods of revealing himself, but perhaps they will not be visual. So I accepted the picture of him I had constructed in my mind. It was with that form that he spoke to me from the letter.
I was in a dilemma about what to read first, Prof. Ameer Ali’s article or Hasan’s letter. I adopted my usual practice in such situations: delayed gratification. The one that raised more curiosity, I saved for later. I opted for the professor’s article and climbed up to my upper berth and switched on the reading light. The outside world faded away.
Below the title the author had added a short quotation from one of Tennyson’s poems as an epigraph: Theirs not to make reply, / Theirs not to reason why, / Theirs but to do and die. After that, he plunged straight into the matter without even a synopsis.
Prof. Ameer Ali adopted a documentary style of presenting historical facts in a linear and objective manner. He did not attempt to provide new insights or to project his own arguments. One could call the article eclectic. And yet, reminding me of the electric current that had passed through me upon reading his name, he began with a reference to thugs. Colonialists have popularized their preconceived notions that thugs were the cruellest killers history had ever seen, he wrote. On the other hand, postcolonial historians and critics of orientalism like to think of thugs as a creation of the colonial rulers’ imagination. While Aijaz Ahmad consigns thuggee to the ‘realm of pure untruth’ and Radhika Singha to ‘constructed history’, Kathleen Gough characterizes thugs as ‘social bandits’ or remnants of peasant insurrections. All of them are wrong, declared the author. Thugs existed. Just as the several other groups or cults that made killing a matter of faith. Templars, Jesuits, Buccaneers and many others. But none equalled the Assassins.
At this point Prof. Ameer Ali turned his attention to Islamic history, going back to the death of the Prophet, to illustrate the context of the emergence of the Assassins. The story goes that Mohammed had nominated Ali, his daughter Fatima’s husband, as his successor or caliph and Abu Bakr, his wife Ayesha’s father, as amir. But in the disputes that followed Mohammed’s death, Ali was superseded and became the fourth caliph only after the reigns of Abu Bakr, Umar and Usman. Even after his succession to the Caliphate the strife continued and eventually Ali was killed. Al Hasan who succeeded Ali also met the same fate and Muawiya of the other camp enthroned himself as caliph. The Umayyad dynasty established by Muawiya then moved its capital from Mecca to Damascus. The Abbasid dynasty, which unseated the Umayyads, established its Caliphate and made Baghdad its seat. It was followed by the Ottoman dynasty and Usman, their caliph, who ruled from Constantinople. The Sunnis recognize all these rulers as caliphs.
The Shias, however, regard only those who are descendants of Ali as the rightful Imams (they do not accept the word caliph). In their order there were only twelve rightful Imams starting with Ali, Al Hasan, Al Husain, Zainul Abidin, and so on, until Muhammad, the twelfth Imam. The Shias are further divided into two different sects. While Imamiyahs acknowledge all the twelve Imams, Ismailiyahs consider Ismail, son of the sixth Imam, Jafar, the last true Imam. They believe in an abstract concept of a God who is neither existent nor non-existent, neither intelligent nor unintelligent and neither powerful nor powerless.
The Sunnis flourished in the Middle East with their capitals moving from Mecca to Damascus to Baghdad and Constantinople, right from the time of the Prophet’s death to nearly the end of the nineteenth century. Other Sunni rulers such as Abdur Rahman of the Umayyad dynasty moved to Spain in the eighth century to establish a Caliphate from Cordova. When Cordova fell to the Christians, a new Caliphate was established in Granada by the Moors, which carried on till it fell to the Christians in the fifteenth century.
In the meanwhile, Ubaidullah, a scion of the Sunni Abbasid Caliphate Muqtadir, claimed to be a direct descendant of Fatima, Ali’s wife, and moved to Egypt to establish a Fatimid Caliphate at Cairo that flourished from the tenth to the twelfth centuries. For the Twelvean Imamiyahs as well as the Sevener Ismailiyahs, this resurrection of Shia faith generated a lot of confidence and fervour.
Contrary to Sunni practice, Shias built myths and wove their imagination around their Imams, raising them to the level of divinity. Ali reigns on a throne in the midst of clouds, they believe. Lightning is his anger and thunder his roar. The fifth Imam, Muhammad al Baqir, did not die and still inhabits our world, according to some.
Shias believed that through the Fatimid Caliphate they would recapture lost power. Among the political sects borne out of this belief, the one that came to be known as Assassins was the most organized, extremist and violent. Their modus operandi consisted of preparations in utmost secrecy and executions with maximum publicity, in front of the largest possible crowd. They wanted the public to recognize the name Assassins and recognize their mission as murder. They made it a point to claim responsibility once the ‘assassination’ was carried out.
The Assassins were highly organized and specialized in imparting prolonged, rigorous and secretive training to the recruits. Their goal was to capture power; they believed that the end justified the means and were not too particular about the Islamic ideals taught by the Prophet or the common principles of human morality. They, in fact, believed that their emotional and religious detachment made them better fighters. They encouraged it.
The first stage of the training involved an education in the material sciences. Religion came in the second stage. Here, the recruits were indoctrinated into an unquestioning submission to the teacher. However, they were encouraged to approach the Qur’an critically and even go beyond it. Myths, symbols, signs and imageries, completely alien to the holy book, were introduced to them. This included a belief in the divinity of the figure seven. Seven Imams: Ali, al Hasan, al Husain, Zainul Abidin, Muhammad al Baqir, Jafar a Sadiq and, finally, Ismail, the son of God. Seven heavens, seven worlds, seven oceans, planets, colours, musical notes, metals, and so on. The lesson being that the Almighty has constructed the universe on the principle of seven. Like seven Imams, there were also seven holy men sent by God: Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed and Ismail, and they graced the seven thrones in heaven. But the final messenger of God remained Ismail and he alone.
Here my thoughts strayed to the inset titled ‘The Game of Seven’ that had appeared in the Welcome Hotel blast reports. The blast had occurred on the seventh day of the seventh month. Seventy-seven people had been killed, seven bodies had remained unidentified, and seven people were still missing. It was not just a gallery of coincidences that existed, but a coincidence of galleries too!