In 1272, a Venetian merchant named Marco Polo traveled through the mountains of northern Persia. He never set foot in Alamut Castle — the Mongols had destroyed it sixteen years earlier. But in the markets along the Silk Road, he heard a story so wild it would survive for eight centuries. A hidden valley between two mountains, turned into the most beautiful garden ever made — golden pavilions, streams of wine and honey, and the most beautiful women in the world.
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Tricksters & Folk Tales·7/7·1′
The place
Alamut Castle
The Paradise Garden of the Old Man
The most famous lie ever told about the Assassins -- and the astonishing truth it buried for eight hundred years
1090-1256 CE (Nizari Ismaili period); 1272 (Marco Polo's journey through Persia)Alamut Castle
Moral of the Story
“The most enduring stories about a people are not always the truest -- legends born from fear, prejudice, and the imagination of outsiders can eclipse centuries of scholarship, devotion, and genuine achievement, until the myth becomes more real than the history it replaced.”
Characters
H
Hassan-i Sabbah (the 'Old Man of the Mountain')M
Marco Polo (Venetian traveler who spread the legend)R
Rustichello da Pisa (who transcribed Polo's account)R
Rashid al-Din Sinan (Syrian 'Old Man of the Mountain')F
Farhad Daftary (modern scholar who debunked the myths)Source
Marco Polo, The Travels of Marco Polo (Yule-Cordier translation, Book 1, Ch. 24); Farhad Daftary, The Assassin Legends: Myths of the Isma'ilis (I.B. Tauris, 1994); Bernard Lewis, The Assassins: A Radical Sect in Islam (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1967); Ata-Malik Juvayni, Tarikh-i Jahangushay (c.1260); Sylvestre de Sacy, Academy of Inscriptions lecture, 1809; Encyclopaedia Iranica, 'HASAN SABBAH'