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Rh Persia. Their name is derived from hashish (marijuana), the intoxicating hemp under the influence of which they sup- posedly committed their murders. The order was a secret organization headed by a grand master below whom stood priors followed by propagandists. Near the bottom were the devotees ready to execute at all cost the grand master's orders. The devotees made free and treacherous use of the dagger against Christians and Moslems alike; they made assassination an art.

About the same time that the Crusaders were entering Syria from the north-west the Assassins were entering it from the north-east. Their first important collaborator was the Seljuk amir Ridwan of Aleppo. Efforts to gain control of cities failed, as had the Druzes'. By 1140 they had acquired several strongholds in mountainous northern Syria, where between 40,000 and 60,000 obeyed the orders of the Syrian grand master at Misyaf. For thirty years, beginning about 1162, this high office was held by Rashid-al-Din Sinan. Assassins made two attempts on the life of Saladin and killed, among others, Raymond II of Tripoli and Conrad of Montferrat, titular king of Jerusalem. In 1172 Sinan sent envoys to the king of Jerusalem to discuss the possibility of conversion on the part of his men to Christianity. This was in line with the practice of dissimulation prescribed by ultra-Shiite tenets. Fearing the loss of tribute which the Assassins were then paying the Templars, these knights murdered the envoys. During his stay at Acre, Louis IX exchanged gifts with the current grand master, but the Assassins' power in the thirteenth century was less than in the twelfth. With Baybars' destruction of their fortresses, which for years had sheltered intrigue and murder, the Syrian Assassin power was for ever crushed.

The work begun by Baybars against the Franks was continued by his equally energetic and zealous successor Qalawun (1279-1290). The Hospitaller fortress al-Marqab yielded in 1285 and its defenders were escorted to Tripoli, Rh