In 1092, Nizam al-Mulk was the most powerful man in the Islamic world. For thirty years, he’d served as grand vizier — chief minister — of the Seljuq Empire, first under Sultan Alp Arslan, then his son Malik-Shah I. His domain stretched from China’s borders to the Mediterranean. He built state-funded schools to counter a movement he saw as a threat: the Ismaili Muslims. He wrote a handbook on ruling still read today. And one man, in a mountain fortress called Alamut, decided he had to die.
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Crowns & Conquests·6/7·1′
The place
Alamut Castle
The First Blade
The assassination that shattered the Seljuq Empire and announced the Assassins to the world
October 14, 1092 CE (10 Ramadan 485 AH)Alamut Castle
Moral of the Story
“A single blade in the hand of a true believer can accomplish what an army of a hundred thousand cannot -- and the mighty who believe themselves untouchable learn, too late, that no wall of soldiers can protect a man from an idea whose time has come.”
Characters
H
Hassan-i Sabbah (master of Alamut who ordered the killing)N
Nizam al-Mulk (Abu Ali al-Hasan ibn Ali al-Tusi, Seljuq vizier)A
Abu Tahir Arrani (the fidai who carried out the assassination)S
Sultan Malik-Shah I (Seljuq sultan, died 35 days later)S
Sultan Alp Arslan (Malik-Shah's father, whom Nizam also served)Source
Ata-Malik Juvayni, Tarikh-i Jahangushay (c.1260); Nizam al-Mulk, Siyasatnama (Book of Government, c.1091); Rashid al-Din Hamadani, Jami al-Tawarikh (c.1310); Bernard Lewis, The Assassins: A Radical Sect in Islam (1967); Farhad Daftary, The Isma'ilis: Their History and Doctrines (Cambridge, 2007); World History Encyclopedia