Tag Archives: Iran

Islam’s First Terrorists, Part 5

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on August 21, 2015

This is the fifth of a six-part series. Read parts one, two, three, and four.

Lamsar fortress, the Nizaris' second castle near their Alamut headquarters in northern Iran

Lamsar fortress, the Nizaris’ second castle near their Alamut headquarters in northern Iran

The End of the Nizaris

In 1218, the Mongols reached the Jaxartes River, becoming immediate neighbours of the Khorazmshah. By 1219, Genghis Khan had crossed the river and entered the Islamic world. By 1240 the Mongols had overrun Iran and were invading Georgia, Armenia, and northern Mesopotamia.

In this period, the Nizaris—who never forgot their mission—had dispatched envoys from Alamut to convert the Ismailis of the Gujerati coast from the “old preaching” to the “new preaching”. In time, India would become a main centre of Ismailism.

There is one final documented episode—albeit hazily—from the Nizaris in Syria around this time. The stories of the Assassins’ attempts to kill France’s King (now Saint) Louis IX as an infant can, like all stories of the Assassins operating on European soil, be dismissed as invention. But after King Louis arrived in Palestine in June 1249, there is every indication that he reached a compact with the Assassins, which involved paying them tribute. Continue reading →

Islam’s First Terrorists, Part 4

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on August 20, 2015

This is the fourth of a six-part series. Read parts one, two, and three.

Girdkuh fortress, northern Iran

Girdkuh fortress, northern Iran

The Nizaris’ Turn to Sunnism

In Persia, a new power was rising in the east: Tekish, the Shah of Khorazm. In 1194, the Caliph, al-Nasir, was hard-pressed by the Seljuk Sultan of Isfahan, Tughrul II, and appealed to Khorazmshah Tekish for help, providing the excuse for the Khorazmshah to extend into western Iran. Tughrul II was soon killed, taking the Seljuk Empire with him.

The Seljuks had been the major power in Islam for 150 years, and while their rule had ended, the pattern of rule they brought—Turkish colonization, Turkish annexation of local ruling systems, and a stern orthodoxy—remained and was expanded. The Khorazmshah himself was a product of this: the office was descended from a Turkish slave soldier sent to Khorazm as a governor by the Seljuk Great Sultan Malik-Shah. Continue reading →

Islam’s First Terrorists, Part 3

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on August 19, 2015

This is the third of a six-part series. Read parts one and two.

Masyaf fortress, eastern Hama, the headquarters of the Assassins (1141-1270)

Masyaf fortress, eastern Hama, the headquarters of the Assassins (1141-1270)

The death of Hassan-i Sabbah and The Resurrection

Rashid ad-Din Sinan

Rashid ad-Din Sinan

Hassan-i Sabbah, the Nizaris’ first and most successful leader, died in May 1124. Hassan-i Sabbah was a fanatic who sternly imposed the Holy Law—even executing one of his own sons for drinking wine and another son (mistakenly) for an unauthorized assassination. An extreme ascetic and recluse, Hassan-i Sabbah left his house twice in the thirty-five years after taking Alamut. Hassan-i Sabbah’s great skill was in weaponizing the discontents of the dispossessed and refining the doctrine of al-dawa jadida (the new preaching).

Hassan-i Sabbah never claimed to be the Imam, merely the only one who knew what the Imam wanted. Hassan-i Sabbah confirmed the Ismaili doctrine as essentially authoritarian, where the believer must follow an Imam, the only source of truth, who has been appointed by god (unlike the Sunni view where the believer can choose an Imam).

The Nizaris’ history divides into essentially four parts after this: Continue reading →

Islam’s First Terrorists, Part 2

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on August 18, 2015

This is the second of a six-part series. For part one, see here. 

2. Alamut

Alamut fortress, northern Iran, the headquarters of the Nizaris

The Origins of the Nizaris in Persia

Hassan-i Sabbah would lead the Nizaris in Persia. Recruited in Rayy, near Tehran, by the chief dawa (missionary) of the Fatimids in 1072, Hassan-i Sabbah went to Egypt between 1078 and 1081, before returning to Iran to proselytize. In 1090, Hassan-i Sabbah won control of the fortress of Alamut in north-west Iran, which would become the headquarters of the Nizaris. Throughout the 1090s, the Nizaris gained control of further castles in Daylam, specifically the Rudbar area; in the southwest of Iran between Khuzestan and Fars; and in the east in Quhistan. Most impressive was the capture of the fortress at Shahdiz, near Isfahan, in 1096-7.

The Daylamis were a notoriously rebellious and hardy people; one of the last to convert to Islam, they were then among the first to assert their independence within it, first politically by forming a separate dynasty and then religiously by converting to Shi’ism. Continue reading →

Islam’s First Terrorists, Part 1

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on August 17, 20151

Book Review: The Assassins: A Radical Sect in Islam (1967) by Bernard Lewis

Abstract

The fourth Caliph, Ali, was assassinated during a civil war that his supporters, Shi’atu Ali (Followers of Ali), lost to the Umayyads, who thereafter moved the capital to Damascus. The Shi’a maintained that the Caliphate should have been kept in the Prophet’s family; over time this faction evolved into a sect unto themselves, which largely functioned as an official opposition, maintaining its claim to the Caliphate, but doing little about it. Several ghulat (extremist) Shi’a movements emerged that did challenge the Caliphate. One of them was the Ismailis. Calling themselves the Fatimids, the Ismailis managed to set up a rival Caliphate in Cairo from the mid-tenth century until the early twelfth century that covered most of North Africa and western Syria. A radical splinter of the Ismailis, the Nizaris, broke with the Fatimids in the late eleventh century and for the next century-and-a-half waged a campaign of terror against the Sunni order from bases in Persia and then Syria. In the late thirteenth century the Nizaris were overwhelmed by the Mongols in Persia and by the Egyptian Mameluke dynasty which halted the Mongol invasion in Syria. The Syrian-based branch of the Nizaris became known as the Assassins, and attained legendary status in the West after they murdered several Crusader officials in the Levant. Attention has often turned back to the Assassins in the West when terrorist groups from the Middle East are in the news, but in the contemporary case of the Islamic State (ISIS) the lessons the Nizaris can provide are limited. Continue reading →

America Abandons the Syrian Revolution

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on August 14, 2015

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In the last week, two events have provided further evidence that the United States has effectively sided with the Assad regime in Syria, acting effectively as the regime’s air force, and that America’s alliance with Assad is part of the broader policy of détente with Iran, facilitated by the nuclear deal, which has ceded Syria to Iran as a sphere of influence. Continue reading →

A Response to Criticism: Why the Ex-Saddamists in the Islamic State Matter

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on August 10, 2015

Abu Ayyub al-Masri and Abu Omar al-Baghdadi: ISIS's co-leaders, 2006-10

Abu Ayyub al-Masri and Abu Omar al-Baghdadi: ISIS’s co-leaders, 2006-10

In the Jerusalem Post on Sunday, Seth Frantzman wrote in opposition to the idea that the ex-military-intelligence officials of the Saddam Hussein regime had contributed significantly to the success of the Islamic State (ISIS) in taking over large swathes of Syria and Iraq. Much of what Frantzman says, about the overestimation of ISIS and Iran’s growing Imperium pushing Sunnis into ISIS’s camp, is unarguable, but he is in error about the time-frame of the ex-Saddamists’ migration into ISIS and underestimates their impact. Continue reading →

Obituary: Robert Conquest

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on August 5, 2015

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Few men did more than the historian Robert Conquest to refute the lies of the Soviet Union, undermining its ideology and propaganda, therefore its appeal, and ultimately its regime. Indeed, at the final meeting of the Soviet Central Committee a Stalinist hack described Conquest as “anti-Sovietchik No. 1“; a compliment if ever there was one. Continue reading →

Reassessing the Saudi-led Intervention in Yemen

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on July 24, 2015

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The Saudi-led Operation DECISIVE STORM began in Yemen on March 25 as a campaign of airstrikes against the Iran-backed Houthis, to weaken them and re-install the president, Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi, who was overthrown by the Houthis last September.

In April, I wrote in support of the Saudi-led operation for: (1) having drawn a line against Iran’s imperialism after Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq; (2) potentially decreasing the growth of the Islamic State (ISIS) by providing Sunnis, in Yemen and beyond, with an alternative form of resistance to Iran’s encroachments; and (3) offering a chance for more stability in Yemen, which was then in free fall with Iran, al-Qaeda, and ISIS capitalizing on the chaos. Continue reading →

The Iran Deal: More Terrorism And An Eventual Bomb—And That’s If It Holds

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on July 17, 2015

Published at The Independent

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With all the leaks and the numerous “interim” deals, the nuclear deal—the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)—made with Iran on July 14 contained few surprises. The deal makes Iran a threshold nuclear-weapons regime for its duration and smooths the path to an overt nuclear-weapons capacity afterward. In the meantime, it has given Iran extra resources for the export of terrorism. And that’s just if Iran keeps the deal. Continue reading →