The curse of the evil eye did not tarry in doing away with the new heir. He died as suddenly as his brother of a fever which was just as suspect.
The Chinese woman had a last son whom she asked the Sultan to designate as heir. The affair was trickier this time, since the child was only a year-and-a-half old and Malikshah was the father of three other boys who were all older. Two of them were born to a slave girl, but the eldest, named Barkiyaruk, was the son of the Sultan’s own cousin. What pretext could he use to brush them aside? Who better than this prince, who was doubly Seljuk, to be elevated to the rank of heir to the throne? Such was the view of Nizam, who wanted to interject some order into the Turkish squabbles, who had always been eager to institute some form of hereditary dynasty and who had insisted, with the best arguments in the world, that Malikshah’s eldest son should be designated heir, but with no success.
Malikshah dared not go against Terken, and as he could not nominate his son by her, he nominated no one preferring to risk dying without an heir, like his father and all his clan.
Terken was not satisfied and would not be until her lineage was duly assured — that is to say that more than anything in the world she desired to see Nizam, the obstacle to her ambitions, fall into disgrace. In order to obtain his death warrant, she was ready to use intrigue or issue threats, and day after day she followed the negotiations with the Assassins. She had accompanied the Sultan and his vizir on their journey to Baghdad. She was keen to be there for the execution.
It was Nizam’s last meal. The supper was an iftar, the banquet which marks the break of the fast of the tenth day of Ramadan. Dignitaries, courtiers and emirs of the army were all unusually abstemious out of respect for the holy month. The table was laid inside a huge yurt. Slaves carried torches to enable people to choose their food. Sixty ravenous hands stretched toward the huge silver platters, the best piece of camel or lamb and the choicest legs of partridge, skimming off flesh and sauce. They divided the food, ripped it apart and devoured it. If someone found himself in possession of a particularly toothsome item, he would offer it to a neighbour he wished to honour.
Nizam was eating little. That evening he was suffering more than usual. His chest was on fire and his insides felt as if they were being churned by the hand of an invisible giant. He was making an effort to hold himself upright. Malikshah was at his side, munching everything his neighbours passed to him. From time to time he was seen to look at his vizir out of the corner of his eye, thinking that he must be afraid. Suddenly he stretched his hand toward a plate of black figs, selected the plumpest and offered it to Nizam who accepted it politely and bit into it. What savour could figs have when one was three times condemned, by God, the Sultan and the Assassins?
By the time the iftar was over, it was already night. Malikshah jumped up, in a hurry to go and join his Chinese woman and tell her about the vizir’s grimaces. Nizam leant on his elbows and hoisted himself up with some effort. His harem’s tents were not far off and his old female cousin would have prepared a concoction of myrobalan to provide him some ease. He only had to take a hundred steps to be there. Around him was the inevitable confusion of royal camps with its soldiers, servants and wandering tradesmen. Now and then he could hear the stifled laugh of a courtesan. How long the path seemed, and he was dragging himself along it alone. Usually he was surrounded by a group of courtiers, but who now wished to be seen with an outlaw? Even the beggars had fled — what could they hope to obtain from a disgraced old man?
However someone was approaching him, a decent-looking man clothed in a patched coat. He muttered some pious words and Nizam felt for his purse and retrieved three pieces of gold. This unknown man who would still approach him ought to be rewarded.
There was a flash, the flash of a sword and everything happened very quickly. Hardly had Nizam seen the hand move before the dagger pierced his clothing and skin and the point worked its way between his ribs. He had not even shouted out, but just made a dazed movement and gasped a last breath. As he was dying, he may have seen again, in slow motion, the blade, the arm stretching out and withdrawing and the nervous mouth which spat out: This present comes to you from Alamut!’
Then cries went up. The Assassin had run off but had been tracked from tent to tent and found. Hurriedly they slit his throat and dragged him barefoot to be thrown on to a fire.
In the years and decades to come, innumerable messengers from Alamut would meet the same death, the only difference being that they would not attempt to flee. ‘It is not enough to kill our enemies,’ Hassan taught them. ‘We are not murderers but executioners. We must act in public as an example. By killing one man we terrorize a hundred thousand. However, it is not enough to execute and terrorize, we must also know how to die, for if, by killing, we discourage our enemies from undertaking any action against us, by dying in the most courageous fashion, we force the masses to admire us, and from their midst men will come to join us. Dying is more important than killing. We kill to defend ourselves, but we die to convert, and to conquer. Conquering is the aim we are seeking; defending ourselves is only a means thereto.’
Assassinations generally took place on Friday in the mosque, at the moment of solemn prayer and in front of the assembled people. The victim, be he vizir, prince or religious dignitary, would arrive surrounded by an imposing guard. The crowd would be impressed, submissive and admiring. The emissary from Alamut would be there somewhere in the most unexpected of disguises — as a member of the guard, for example. At the moment when everyone’s gaze was on the victim, he would strike. The victim would die and the executioner would not move, but would yell out a formula he had learnt and with a smile of defiance would wait to be set upon by the furious guards and then ripped limb from limb by the frightened crowd. The message had been delivered; the successor to the person who had been assassinated would make himself more conciliatory toward Alamut, and there would be a score, or two score conversions amongst those present.
So unreal were these scenes that it was often said that Hassan’s men were drugged. How otherwise could it be explained that they went to their deaths with a smile? Some credence was given to the assertion that they were acting under the influence of hashish and it was Marco Polo who popularized this idea in the West. Their enemies in the Muslim world would contemptuously call them hash-ishiyun, ‘hashish-smokers’; some Orientalists thought that this was the origin of the word ‘assassin’, which in many European languages has become synonymous with murderer. The myth of the ‘Assassins’ was more terrifying yet.
The truth is different. According to texts which have come down to us from Alamut, Hassan liked to call his disciples Assassiyun, meaning people who are faithful to the Assass, the ‘foundation’ of the faith. This is the word, misunderstood by foreign travellers, which seemed similar to hashish.
Hassan Sabbah indeed had a passion for plants and he had a miraculous knowledge of their curative, sedative or stimulative characteristics. He himself grew all sorts of herbs and looked after his adepts when they were ill, knowing what potions to prescribe for them to revive their constitution. Thus we know of one of his recipes which was intended to stimulate his disciples’ minds and render them more adept at their studies. It was a mixture of honey, pounded nuts and coriander and was considered a very agreeable medicine. However, we must go by the evidence, in spite of the tenacity and allure of tradition: the Assassins had no drug other than straightforward faith, which was constantly reinforced by the intense instruction, the most efficient organization and the strictest apportionment of tasks.