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By Root 902 0

to him by his father and uncle, Marco explains that these notorious raiders were followers of a mythical-sounding but all-too-real figure known as the Old Man, who ruled from a fastness called Alamut, “Eagle’s Nest.” The Assassins’ name, he says, derived from the Arabic phrase meaning “those who eat hashish”—a ritual they performed to nerve themselves for their missions. He relates how the Old Man drugged and manipulated his followers to do his bidding: “Sometimes the Old Man, when he wished to kill any lord who made war or was his enemy, made them put some of these youths into that Paradise by fours and by tens and by twenties just as he wished, in this way. For he had opium…given to them by which they fell asleep immediately…and they slept three days and three nights. Then he had them taken and put into that garden, and made them wake.” At that moment, they beheld alluring women “singing and playing and making all the caresses and dalliance that they could imagine, giving them food and most delicate wines, so that intoxicated with so many pleasures and with the little streams of milk and wine that they saw,” they were made to believe that they were “truly in Paradise.” In summoning this vision of evil, Marco may well have exaggerated the role hashish played in the Assassin cult. Use of the drug was widespread in the region, not confined to Assassins, and the effects may have debilitated rather than emboldened its users.

The zealous Assassins inspired dread in surrounding kingdoms. Marco reports: “Many kings and many lords paid tribute to him [the Old Man] and cultivated his friendship for fear that he might bring about their death. This happened because at the time the nations were not united in their allegiance, but torn apart by conflicting loyalties and purposes.”

That was the state of affairs until 1256, when Kublai Khan’s brother, Hülegü, dislodged the Assassins from their Eagle’s Nest. Marco writes of a three-year-long siege that starved out the dangerous band and ended with their deaths. And he confidently reports, “To this moment, there has not been found any such Old Man nor any such assassin.” That was not strictly true, for remnants of the Assassins concealed themselves in the mountains in Marco’s day, their ability to menace their neighbors greatly reduced, but their notorious reputation still vital.

With his artful description, Marco perpetuated the Assassins’ infamy in the Western consciousness, but as he admitted, his account was based on dramatic hearsay rather than personal experience. In reality, the sect, founded by Hasan ibn al-Sabbah in 1090, was more complex than he suggested. Its fanatical members came to be known as Nizaris (so called after their caliph, Nizar ibn al-Sabbah) or as Ismai’ilis (a type of Shiite). They did inhabit a mountain fastness called Alamut, located south of the Caspian Sea. As the sect grew, outposts spread across Persia and Syria, and members were rigidly segregated into classes; potential martyrs and assassins belonged to the highest category. The young Venetian was unaware that Muslims also dreaded and stigmatized the Ismai’ilis, whom they considered dangerously heretical.

MARCO REMAINED uneasy as the Polo company gradually descended from the terrifying castle “through beautiful valleys and through beautiful slopes” to a lush plain “where there is much beautiful grass and much good pasture for cattle and fruit enough and of all things to eat in great abundance.”

The Polo company then made its cautious way eastward through what is now Afghanistan, the nexus of Central Asia. Seven hundred years later, the legendary English voyager Nancy Hatch Dupree would describe the road to Balkh in her book of the same name: “Here gnarled branches, blackened with dampness, form abstract patterns against the glistening snows of winter. These stark pictures soften as spring spreads a blanket of soft green; tulips bloom and children fashion delicate pink wands for the passerby. As spring advances, cherry, apricot, pear, and almond burst into bloom, their beauty sharp against brilliant