Assassin's Creed

Okay, so I'm obsessed with a video game. It's really cool, and you play as an assassin (nizari ismaili shi'i muslim) during the crusades, and you can go to Damascus and Jerusalem. I climbed on top of Masjid Al-Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock, couldn't tell which one was Church of Sepulchre, and couldn't get to The Wall.

The history of the assassins is crazy. Look 'em up. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashshashin


Founded by Hasan ibn Sabah, nicknamed Ash-Sheikh Al-Jabal (lit. "The Old Man of the Mountain"), The Assassins were Nizari Ismaili Shiite Muslims, who still have spiritual descendants to this day (the leader being the Aga Khan)

"Nothing is Forbidden, Everything is Permitted"
-Hasan ibn Sabah

"In the year 1092 two men stood on the ramparts of a medieval fortress, Alamut, the Eagle's Nest, perched high upon the crags of the Persian mountains: One the personal representative of the Emperor, and the other the veiled figure who claimed to be the incarnation of God on earth - Hasan, son of Sabbah, Sheikh of the Mountains, and leader of the Assassins.  "You see my devotee standing guard on that minaret?", said the Sheikh. "Watch!"

He made a signal. Instantly the white-robed figure threw up his hands in salutation, and cast himself down two thousand feet into the foaming torrent which surrounded the fortress.

"I have seventy thousand men - and women - throughout Asia, each one of them ready to do my bidding. Can your master, Malik, Shah ("King" in Arabic and Farsi), say the same? And he asks me to surrender to his sovereignty!? This is your answer. Go!"


"The Sheikh kept at his court such boys of twelve years old as seemed to him destined to become courageous men. When the Sheikh sent them into the garden in groups of four, ten or twenty, he gave them hashish to drink. They slept for three days, then they were carried sleeping into the garden where he had them awakened."

"When these young men woke, and found themselves in the garden with all these marvelous things, they truly believed themselves to be in paradise. And these damsels were always with them in songs and great entertainments; they; received everything they asked for, so that they would never have left that garden of their own will."

"And when the Sheikh wished to kill someone, he would take him and say: 'Go and do this thing. I do this because I want to make you return to paradise'. And the assassins go and perform the deed willingly."
  
  - Marco Polo - on his visit to Alamut in 1273