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Thus, having forged the most perfect tools of war imaginable, Hassan Sabbah installed himself in his fortress and never left it again; his biographers even say that during the last thirty years of his life he only went out of his house twice, and both times it was to go up on the roof! Morning and evening he was there, sitting cross-legged on a mat which his body had worn out but which he never wished to change or have repaired. He taught, he wrote, he set his killers on to his enemies, and, five times a day he prayed on the same mat along with whoever was visiting him at the time.

For the benefit of those who have never had the opportunity to visit the ruins of Alamut, it is worth pointing out that this site would not have acquired such historical importance if its only advantage had been its inaccessibility and if the plateau at the mountain’s summit had not been large enough to support a town, or at least a very large village. At the time of the Assassins it was reached by a narrow tunnel to the east which emerged into the lower fortress with its tangle of alleys and little mud houses in the shadow of the walls; the upper fortress was reached by crossing the maydan, the large square, the only meeting area for the whole community. This was shaped like a bottle lying on its side, with its wide base in the east and its neck toward the west. The bottleneck itself was a heavily guarded corridor at the end of which lay Hassan’s house whose single window looked out on to a precipice. It was a fortress within a fortress.

By means of the spectacular murders which he ordered, and the legends which grew up around him, his sect and his castle, the Grand Master of the Assassins terrorized the Orient and the Occident over a long period. In every Muslim town high officials fell and even the crusaders had two or three eminent victims to lament. However it is all too often forgotten that it was primarily at Alamut that terror reigned.

What reign is worse than that of militant virtue? The Supreme Preacher wanted to regulate every second of his adherents’ lives. He proscribed all musical instruments; if he discovered the smallest flute he would break it in public and throw it into the flames; the transgressor was put in irons and given a good whipping before being expelled from the community. The use of alcoholic drinks was even more severely punished. Hassan’s own son, found intoxicated one evening by his father, was condemned to death on the spot; in spite of his mother’s pleadings he was decapitated at dawn the next day as an example. No one ever dared to swallow a mouthful of wine.

The justice of Alamut was, to say the least, speedy. It was said that a crime had been committed one day within the fortress and that a witness had accused Hassan’s second son. Without attempting to verify the fact, Hassan had his last son’s head cut off. A few days later, the real culprit confessed; he in turn was decapitated.

Biographers of the Grand Master mention the slaughter of his son in order to illustrate his strictness and impartiality; they point out that the community of Alamut became a haven of virtue and morality through the blessing of such exemplary discipline, and this can very easily be believed; however, we know from various sources that the day after these executions Hassan’s only wife as well as his daughters rose up against his authority, and that he ordered them thrown out of Alamut and recommended that his successors do the same in the future in order to avoid the womenfolk having any influence over their correct judgement.

To loose himself from the world, create a void around his person, surround himself with walls of stone and fear — such seems to have been Hassan Sabbah’s demented dream.

However this void started to stifle him. The most powerful kings have jesters or jovial companions to lighten the oppressive atmosphere which surrounds them. The man with the bulging eyes was incurably alone, walled up in his fortress, shut up in his house, closed to himself. He had no one to talk to, only docile subjects, dumb servants and awestruck disciples.

Of all the people he had known, there was only one to whom he could still talk, if not as friend to friend then at least as man to man and that was Khayyam. He had thus written him a letter in which despair disguised itself behind a thick façade of pride:

‘Instead of living as a fugitive, why do you not come to Alamut? Like you, I have been persecuted but now it is I who persecute. Here you will be protected, looked after and respected. No emir on earth will be able to harm a hair of your head. I have founded a huge library where you will find the rarest works and will be able to read and write at leisure. In this place you will find peace.’

CHAPTER 23

Since he had left Isfahan, Khayyam had been leading effectively the existence of a fugitive and a pariah. When he betook himself to Baghdad, the Caliph forbad him to speak in public or to receive his numerous admirers who presented themselves at his door. When he visited Mecca, his detractors sniggered: ‘A pilgrimage of servility!’ When, on his return, he passed through Basra, the sons of the qadi of the city came to ask him, in the politest of terms, to cut short his stay.

His fate then was unsettling in the extreme. No one contested his genius or his erudition; wherever he went large groups of intellectuals gathered around him. He was questioned on astrology, algebra, medicine and even religious problems and he was listened to warmly. However, without fail, a few days or weeks after his arrival, a clique would emerge and would disseminate all sorts of lies. He would be called an infidel or a heretic, and his friendship with Hassan Sabbah would be recalled. Sometimes the accusations of being an alchemist, raised against him of old in Samarkand, were dredged up. Ardent opponents were sent to break up his discussions and those who dared shelter him were threatened with reprisals. Usually, he put up no opposition. As soon as he felt the atmosphere become uncomfortable he would feign illness in order not to appear in public again, and he would then not linger, but would go away to somewhere new where his stay would be just as short and precarious.

Honoured and cursed, with no companion other than Vartan, he was constantly in search of a roof, a protector and a patron too; the generous pension which Nizam had allotted to him was no longer being paid out since his death and he was forced to visit princes and governors and prepare their monthly horoscopes. However, even though he was often in need, he managed to get himself paid without bowing his head.

It was told that a vizir, astonished to hear Omar demand a sum of five thousand golden dinars, remarked:

‘Do you know that I myself am not paid that much?’

‘That is quite normal,’ retorted Khayyam.

‘And how so?’

‘Because there is only a handful of intellectuals like me every century, while one could name five hundred vizirs like you every year.’

The chroniclers state that the man found this extremely amusing and went on to satisfy Khayyam’s demands, courteously recognising the correctness of such a haughty equation.

‘No Sultan is happier than I, no beggar sadder,’ Omar wrote during this period.

The years passed and we find him again in 1114 in the city of Merv, the old capital of Khorassan, still famous for its silks and its ten libraries, but deprived for some time now of any political role. To restore some lustre to its tarnished court, the local sovereign was trying to attract the celebrities of the time. He knew just how to seduce Khayyam — by offering to build him an observatory identical to that of Isfahan. At sixty-six years of age, Omar no longer dreamt of anything else and he accepted with adolescent enthusiasm and set right down to work on the project. Soon the building was rising up on a hilltop in the district of Bab Senjan in the middle of a garden of daffodils and white mulberries.