Who are the real ‘Order of Assassins’ depicted in the new must-watch TV series ‘Al-Hashasheen’?

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The drama has further embellished the legends surrounding ‘The Assassins’ and their legacy. (Getty Images)
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Updated 22 March 2024
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Who are the real ‘Order of Assassins’ depicted in the new must-watch TV series ‘Al-Hashasheen’?

  • Ramadan television series sheds light on iconic culture made famous by video game Assassin’s Creed
  • Modern Nizari Ismailis ‘hate’ the misrepresented reputation of their forebears, says Islamic scholar

LONDON: The sweeping period drama “Al-Hashasheen” — or “The Assassins” — is certain to be one of the big hits of the Ramadan TV season.

For many younger viewers, the story of the martial order founded by an enigmatic religious leader in 11th-century Iran will be familiar only through the distorting lens of the smash-hit video game franchise “Assassin’s Creed” — now available for the first time in a virtual-reality version compatible with Meta’s Quest headsets.

“Al-Hashasheen,” starring Karim Abdel Aziz, Fathy Abdel Wahab and Nicolas Mouawad, brings a somewhat more realistic version of the story to a wider audience as families across the region gather for traditional post-iftar TV viewing.




The drama has further embellished the legends surrounding ‘The Assassins’ and their legacy. (Supplied)

But neither the TV series nor the long-running video game franchise do justice to the true story of the Nizari Ismaili sect, the original “assassins,” according to an Iranian-British Islamic scholar.

Many of the myths and legends surrounding the Nizaris “are rooted in the imaginative ignorance of the Crusaders and their Western chroniclers who came to the Holy Land and conquered Jerusalem in 1099,” Farhad Daftary, a governor and director emeritus of the London-based Institute of Ismaili Studies, told Arab News.

The very word “assassin,” coined first by the Crusaders who encountered the Nizaris in Syria, derives from an etymological misunderstanding.

“At the time, the Nizaris, who were Shiite, had enemies among Sunni Muslims, who referred to them as hashshashin, which, if you take its literal meaning, means somebody who uses opium,” said Daftary.

“But it was not in that sense that the term was applied to the Nizari Ismailis of Syria. It was a term of abuse, meaning a people of low morality, people with no social standing. The term was picked up by the Crusaders and interpreted literally.”




Hashshashin, which evolved into "assassin" in the European languages of the Crusader armies, literally means somebody "who uses opium.”  (Supplied)

In the European languages of the Crusader armies, “hashshashin” evolved into “assassin,” a word that nevertheless was associated with one of the many myths about the group — that their leader used opium to drug young men into becoming killing machines.

To understand the true story of the assassins, said Daftary, it is necessary to know something of the political and religious landscape of the 11th century.

At its root was the historic split between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, which dates back to the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632 and centers on the issue of succession. The Shiites believe that the Prophet Muhammad appointed a successor — his cousin and son-in-law Ali ibn Abi Talib — while the Sunnis hold that he did not.

The situation grew even more complex after the death of the sixth Shiite Imam, Jafar Al-Sadiq, in 765, by which time Ali’s descendants had become so numerous that the Shiites could not agree among themselves who was the rightful leader.




Many of the legends surrounding the Nizaris are rooted in the imaginative ignorance of the Crusaders and their Western chroniclers, says Farhad Daftary, governor and director emeritus of the Institute of Ismaili Studies. (Supplied)

The subsequent split created two main Shiite groups. The largest was Twelver Shi’ism, whose members believe that the line of rightful succession ended with the concealment, or occultation, of the 12th imam, Al-Mahdi, whose reappearance is still anticipated by his followers.

The other was the Ismailis, whose name derives from their recognition of Ismail ibn Jafar, the eldest son of Jafar Al-Sadiq, as his rightful spiritual successor.

But even within Ismailism a further split loomed, triggered by the death in 1094 of the 18th Ismaili Imam, who was also the eighth caliph of the Cairo-based Fatimid empire.

“When he died,” said Daftary, “his succession was disputed by two of his sons, Nizar, who was the original heir-designate, and his younger brother, who was actually installed on the Fatimid throne. So, it was on the basis of this succession dispute that the previously unified Ismaili community split into Nizari and Musta’lian factions.”

It was then that the historic figure of Hassan i-Sabbah, a missionary, or dia, working for the Fatimids in Iran, steps into the story.




Painting depicting Hasan ibn Sabbah, a prominent Ismaili leader considered as founder of the Nizari state. (Shutterstock)

At the time, much of what is today Iran was under the control of the Seljuk Turks, and Hassan began plotting a revolution against the unpopular Sunni regime.

As a result, “Hassan, who championed the cause of Nizar in Iran and severed his relations with Cairo and the Fatimid regime, which had lent its support to Nizar’s younger brother, was the founder of the Nizari Ismaili state and community.”

Daftary said it is true that Hassan instituted a policy of assassinations, but the modern characterization of the Nizaris as the original terrorists is misplaced.

Hassan, who seized and established his base in Alamut Castle in Persia’s mountainous north in 1090, “was confronting a very powerful military adversary in the Seljuks. He could not confront them in battle because he could not raise an army to match.”




A view of the Alamut Castle in the mountainous Qazvin region of Iran, which is currently being restored. (Shutterstock)

Instead, he set about destabilizing the decentralized Seljuk authority by targeting key ruling figures, “locality by locality, emir by emir.”

This did not, however, make the Nizaris the precursors of today’s terrorists, said Daftary.

“They had nothing in common with modern terrorists. Their causes were not the same, their means were not the same and their motives and their practices were not the same.

“These assassinations were highly selected and targeted; they were not acts of terror, killing innocent people.”

Besides, “they were not the inventors of assassination, which was practiced at the time by the Seljuks themselves and the Crusaders. But there were highly exaggerated reports and rumors, to the effect that almost every assassination of any major significance in the region was attributed to these people.”

In fact, contemporary records kept by the Nizaris show that during the 34 years of Hassan’s reign, fewer than 50 assassinations were carried out by the group.




Painting depicting the Siege of Alamut by the Mongols in 1256. (Wikimedia Commons: by Tarikh-i Jahangushay-i Juvaini)

The capture of Alamut Castle in 1090 is recognized by historians as the founding moment of the Nizari Ismaili state, based on a series of strongholds strung across Persia and the Levant, which would hold out against all foes, from Islamic rivals to the Christian Crusaders, for 183 years. The state was finally swept away by the Mongols in about 1256.

It was in the Levant that the Crusaders first encountered the Nizaris during the opening decade of the 12th century. Today, the ruins of the group’s main stronghold there, Masyaf Castle, still stand on the edge of the Syrian town of the same name.




Old stone castle Masyaf on the hill, in Masyaf, Syria

Here, between 1162 and 1193, ruled Rashid ad-Din Sinan, lord of the Nizari Ismaili state in Syria, who was immortalized by the Venetian explorer Marco Polo as “The Old Man of the Mountain.”

Polo’s writings repeated and embellished many of the legends surrounding the assassins, said Daftary. These included the supposed existence of “a secret Garden of Paradise, in which the mischievous leader of this group would give hashish to these would-be assassins, who would find themselves surrounded by all the pleasures promised to them in Paradise.




Rashid ad-Din Sinan. (Wikimedia Commons)

“Once they’d become sufficiently addicted to these bodily pleasures, they were given a dagger and sent to kill, and told: ‘If you succeed you will go back to the Garden of Paradise, and if you die, your soul will go to Paradise anyway’.”

The Crusaders “couldn’t understand the self-sacrifice of these people. So, to come up with explanations that would provide logical reasons for a type of behavior which otherwise seemed irrational or crazy to them, they began to fabricate these tales, which, by the way, we do not find in contemporary Muslim sources, even though they were perhaps even more hostile towards the Ismailis than the Crusaders were.”

Today, Nizari Ismailis number about 15 million, with communities all over the world, the largest of them in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Syria, but also in Iran, eastern Africa, the UAE, North America, the UK and several European countries.

Modern Nizari Ismailis “hate” the misrepresented reputation of their forebears, said Daftary, “because they are peaceful, progressive people.”




In this photo taken on March 8, 2018, Britain's Queen Elizabeth II (L) poses with Prince Karim Aga Khan IV (R) at Windsor Castle during a private dinner she hosted in honor of the diamond jubilee of Khan's leadership as Imam of the Shia Nizari Ismaili Muslim Community. (Photo by Dominic Lipinski/POOL/AFP)

The current and 49th imam of the Nizari Ismaili Shiites is His Highness Aga Khan IV, who established the Institute of Ismaili Studies in 1977. The IIS, which has the largest faculty of Islamic studies of any academic institution in the UK, holds the world’s largest collection of original Nizari texts, available in translation to scholars in Persian, Arabic and English.

Daftary does not, he said, want to ruin anyone’s enjoyment of the TV series “Al-Hashasheen” over Ramadan.

“Just remember, most of these stories from the Orient were told by returning Crusaders as they sat by their fireplaces in Europe. So, as long as they are treated as only tales that have nothing to do with the actual history of this community and the practices of this group, then that’s fine.”

 


Israeli fire and airstrikes kill 35 in Gaza

Updated 14 June 2025
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Israeli fire and airstrikes kill 35 in Gaza

  • Hamas, which denies Israeli charges that it steals aid, accused Israel of “employing hunger as a weapon of war and turning aid distribution sites into traps of mass deaths of innocent civilians”

GAZA: Israeli fire and airstrikes killed at least 35 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip, most of them near an aid distribution site operated by the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, local health authorities said.
Medics at Al-Awda and Al-Aqsa hospitals in central Gaza areas, where most of the casualties were moved to, said at least 15 people were killed as they tried to approach the GHF aid distribution site near the Netzarim corridor.
The rest were killed in separate attacks across the enclave, they added.

BACKGROUND

The Gaza Health Ministry said in a statement on Saturday that at least 274 people have so far been killed, and more than 2,000 wounded, near aid distribution sites since the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation began operations.

There has been no immediate comment by the Israeli military or the GHF on Saturday’s incidents.
The GHF began distributing food packages in Gaza at the end of May, overseeing a new model of aid distribution which the UN says is neither impartial nor neutral.
The Gaza Health Ministry said in a statement on Saturday that at least 274 people have so far been killed, and more than 2,000 wounded, near aid distribution sites since the GHF began operations in Gaza.
Hamas, which denies Israeli charges that it steals aid, accused Israel of “employing hunger as a weapon of war and turning aid distribution sites into traps of mass deaths of innocent civilians.”
Later on Saturday, health officials at Shifa Hospital in Gaza said Israeli fire killed at least 12 Palestinians, who gathered to wait for aid trucks along the coastal road north of the strip, taking Saturday’s death toll to at least 35.
The Israeli military ordered residents of Khan Younis and the nearby towns of Abassan and Bani Suhaila in the southern Gaza Strip to leave their homes and head west toward the so-called humanitarian zone, saying it would forcefully work against “terror organizations” in the area.
The war in Gaza erupted 20 months ago after militants raided Israel and took 251 hostages and killed 1,200 people on Oct. 7, 2023, Israel’s single deadliest day.
Israel’s military campaign has killed nearly 55,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to health authorities in Gaza, and flattened much of the densely populated strip, which is home to more than 2 million people.
Most of the population is displaced, and malnutrition is widespread.
Despite efforts by the US, Egypt, and Qatar to restore a ceasefire in Gaza, neither Israel nor Hamas has shown willingness to back down on core demands, with each side blaming the other for the failure to reach a deal.


Egypt delays opening of massive new museum

Updated 14 June 2025
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Egypt delays opening of massive new museum

  • Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly told a press conference on Saturday that the grand opening would be delayed until the last quarter of this year

CAIRO: Egyptian authorities announced on Saturday that the long-awaited inauguration of the Grand Egyptian Museum, known as GEM, would once again be delayed as a result of escalating regional tensions.
“In view of the ongoing regional developments, it was decided to postpone the official inauguration of the Grand Egyptian Museum, which was scheduled for July 3,” the Tourism and Antiquities Ministry said in a statement.
Spanning 50 hectares, the GEM is twice the size of both Paris’ Louvre and New York’s Metropolitan, and two-and-a-half times that of the British Museum, according to its director.
Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly told a press conference on Saturday that the grand opening would be delayed until the last quarter of this year.
In view of current events, “we believed it would be appropriate to delay this big event so that it can maintain the appropriate global momentum,” he added.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi has previously described the GEM as “the largest archeological museum in the world dedicated to one civilization.”
The opening of the massive, ultra-modern museum situated near the Giza Pyramids has been repeatedly delayed over the years due to the COVID-19 pandemic and other reasons.

 


Latest: Israel and Iran strike at each other in new wave of attacks

Updated 3 min 11 sec ago
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Latest: Israel and Iran strike at each other in new wave of attacks

  • Projectiles visible in night sky over Jerusalem
  • Apparent Israeli strike hit South Pars gas field

TEL AVIV/DUBAI: Israel and Iran launched fresh attacks on each other late on Saturday, stoking fears of a wider conflict after Israel expanded its surprise campaign against its main rival with a strike on the world’s biggest gas field.
Tehran called off nuclear talks that Washington had said were the only way to halt Israel’s bombing, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the attacks were nothing compared with what Iran would see in the coming days.
Israel’s military said more missiles were launched from Iran toward Israel late on Saturday, and that it was working to intercept them. It also said it was attacking military targets in Tehran. Iranian state television said Iran had launched missiles and drones at Israel.
Several projectiles were visible in the night sky over Jerusalem late on Saturday. Air raid sirens did not sound in the city, but were heard in the northern Israeli city of Haifa.
Israel’s ambulance service said a woman in her 20s was killed and 13 other people injured when a missile struck a two-story house in northern Israel.
Iran said the Shahran oil depot in Tehran was targeted in an Israeli attack but that the situation was under control. A video posted online by the semi-official Iran Students' News Agency, or ISNA, showed a massive fire raging at the Shahran oil depot in western Tehran. 

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US President Donald Trump had warned Iran of worse to come, but said it was not too late to halt the Israeli campaign if Tehran accepted a sharp downgrading of its nuclear program.
A round of US-Iran nuclear talks due to be held in Oman on Sunday was canceled, with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi saying the discussions could not take place while Iran was being subjected to Israel’s “barbarous” attacks.
In the first apparent attack to hit Iran’s energy infrastructure, the semi-official Tasnim news agency said Iran partially suspended production at the world’s biggest gas field after an Israeli strike caused a fire there on Saturday.
The South Pars field, offshore in Iran’s southern Bushehr province, is the source of most of the gas produced in Iran.
Fears about potential disruption to the region’s oil exports had already driven up oil prices 9 percent on Friday even though Israel spared Iran’s oil and gas on the first day of its attacks.
An Iranian general, Esmail Kosari, said on Saturday that Tehran was reviewing whether to close the Strait of Hormuz controlling access to the Gulf for tankers.

Iran says scores killed
Iran said 78 people were killed on the first day of Israel’s campaign, and scores more on the second, including 60 when a missile brought down a 14-story apartment block in Tehran, where 29 of the dead were children.
Iran had launched its own retaliatory missile volley on Friday night, killing at least three people in Israel.
With Israel saying its operation could last weeks, and Netanyahu urging Iran’s people to rise up against their Islamic clerical rulers, fears have grown of a regional conflagration dragging in outside powers.
B’Tselem, a leading Israeli human rights organization, said on Saturday that instead of exhausting all possibilities for a diplomatic resolution, Israel’s government had chosen to start a war that puts the entire region in danger.
Tehran has warned Israel’s allies that their military bases in the region would come under fire too if they helped shoot down Iranian missiles.
However, 20 months of war in Gaza and a conflict in Lebanon last year have decimated Tehran’s strongest regional proxies, Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, reducing its options for retaliation.
Israel sees Iran’s nuclear program as a threat to its existence, and said the bombardment was designed to avert the last steps to production of a nuclear weapon.
Tehran insists the program is entirely civilian and that it does not seek an atomic bomb. However the UN nuclear watchdog reported it this week as violating obligations under the global non-proliferation treaty.

‘We will hit every site’

Israel said three people were killed and 76 wounded by Iran’s retaliatory drone and missile barrage overnight, which lit up the skies over Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
Netanyahu vowed to keep up Israel’s campaign.
“We will hit every site, every target of the ayatollah regime,” he said in a video statement, threatening greater action “in the coming days.”
He added that the Israeli campaign had dealt a “real blow” to Iran’s nuclear program and maintained it had the “clear support” of US President Donald Trump.
Netanyahu’s defense minister, Israel Katz, warned “Tehran will burn” if it kept targeting Israeli civilians.
Israel’s fire service reported residential buildings were hit following the latest launches.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian fired back that “the continuation of the Zionist aggression will be met with a more severe and powerful response from the Iranian armed forces.”
According to a statement from his office, Pezeshkian also condemned Washington’s “dishonesty” for supporting Israel while engaged in nuclear talks with Iran — which mediator Oman said would no longer take place on Sunday.
Western governments have repeatedly accused Iran of seeking a nuclear weapon, which it denies.
Iran’s top nuclear negotiator, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, said the Israeli attacks undermined negotiations and were pushing the region into a “dangerous cycle of violence.”
With world leaders seeking to contain the conflict, Trump said he and Russian President Vladimir Putin had agreed in a phone call that it needed to stop.
“He feels, as do I, this war in Israel-Iran should end,” Trump said on Truth Social.

 

After decades of enmity and conflict by proxy, it is the first time the arch-enemies have traded fire with such intensity, triggering fears of a prolonged conflict that could engulf the Middle East.
Highlighting the unease, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned against a “devastating war” with regional consequences in a call with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Ankara said.
Israeli strikes have hit Iran’s Natanz uranium enrichment plant and killed its highest-ranking military officer, Mohammad Bagheri, as well as the head of the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Hossein Salami.
The Israeli military said its strikes had killed more than 20 Iranian commanders.
Iranian media reported five Guards killed Saturday in Israeli strikes, while authorities in one northwestern province said 30 military personnel had been killed there since Friday.
Iran’s Red Crescent said an ambulance was hit Saturday in Urmia city, killing two.
Iran called on its citizens to unite in the country’s defense, while Netanyahu urged them to rise up against against the government.
Iran’s Mehr news agency said Tehran had warned Britain, France and the United States it could retaliate if they came to Israel’s defense.
AFP images from the city of Ramat Gan near Tel Aviv showed blown-out buildings, destroyed vehicles and streets strewn with debris after Iran’s first wave of attacks.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said they had struck dozens of targets in Israel. One Iranian missile wounded seven Israeli soldiers, the military said.
Firefighters had worked for hours to free people trapped in a Tel Aviv high-rise building on Friday.
Chen Gabizon, a resident, said he ran to an underground shelter after receiving an alert.
“We just heard a very big explosion, everything was shaking, smoke, dust, everything was all over the place,” he said.
In Tehran, fire and heavy smoke billowed over Mehrabad airport on Saturday, an AFP journalist said.
The Israeli army said it had struck an underground military facility Saturday in western Iran’s Khorramabad that contained surface-to-surface and cruise missiles.
Iranian media also reported a “massive explosion” following an Israeli drone strike on an oil refinery in the southern city of Kangan.
The attacks prompted several countries to temporarily ground air traffic, though on Saturday Jordan, Lebanon and Syria reopened their airspace.
Iran’s airspace was closed until further notice, state media reported, as was Israel’s, according to authorities.

 


We will recognize the State of Palestine soon, Macron tells Asharq News

French President Emmanuel Macron holds a press conference at the Elysee Palace in Paris on Friday. (File/Reuters)
Updated 14 June 2025
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We will recognize the State of Palestine soon, Macron tells Asharq News

  • French president: ‘I have agreed with the Saudi crown prince to postpone the New York conference to a date in the near future’

PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron pledged, in statements to Asharq News on the sidelines of a meeting with journalists and representatives of Palestinian and Israeli civil society institutions, that his country will recognize the State of Palestine at an upcoming conference that France will organize with Saudi Arabia in New York.
In response to a question about whether there are conditions for recognizing the Palestinian state, Macron said: “There are no conditions. Recognition will take place through a process that includes stopping the war on Gaza, restoring humanitarian access to the Gaza Strip, releasing Israeli hostages, and disarming Hamas.”
He stressed: “This is one package.”
Macron indicated that France and Saudi Arabia have agreed to postpone the UN conference they are co-organizing, which was originally scheduled to take place in New York next week. He noted that current developments have prevented Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas from traveling to New York.
Macron explained that he had spoken several times with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Friday and Palestinian President Abbas, and it was agreed to “postpone the meeting to a date in the near future.”
He also claimed that the president of Indonesia, which currently does not officially recognize Israel, had pledged to do so if France recognizes the State of Palestine. Macron emphasized “the need for maintaining this dynamic.”
The International Conference for the Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine, scheduled to be held in New York from June 17-20 and co-chaired by Saudi Arabia and France, outlined in its paper a commitment to the “two-state solution” as the foundational reference. The paper defines a timeline for implementation, outlines the practical obligations of all parties involved, and calls for the establishment of international mechanisms to ensure the continuity of the process.
Asharq News obtained a copy of the paper, which asserts that the implementation of the two-state solution must proceed regardless of local or regional developments. It ensures the full recognition of a Palestinian state as part of a political solution that upholds people’s rights and responds to their aspirations for peace and security.
The paper highlights that the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks and the war on Gaza have led to an unprecedented escalation in violence and casualties, resulting in the most severe humanitarian crisis to date, widespread destruction, and immense suffering for civilians on both sides, including detainees, their families, and residents of Gaza.
It further confirms that settlement activities pose a threat to the two-state solution, which it states is the only path to achieving a just, lasting, and comprehensive peace in the region. The paper notes that the settlement activities undermine regional and international peace, security, and prosperity.
According to the paper, the conference aims to alter the current course by building on national, regional, and international initiatives and adopting concrete measures to uphold international law. The conference will also focus on advancing a just, lasting, and comprehensive peace that ensures security for all the people of the region and fosters regional integration.
The conference reaffirms the international community’s unwavering commitment to a peaceful resolution of the Palestinian cause and the two-state solution, highlighting the urgent need to act in pursuit of these objectives.


Iranian media claims Israeli pilots captured, IDF denies

Updated 14 June 2025
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Iranian media claims Israeli pilots captured, IDF denies

DUBAI: The Iranian army has claimed they have downed a third Israeli F-35 fighter jet since Israel’s attacks began on Friday.

State Iranian media, Tehran Times, reported that one pilot is believed to have been liquidated and another captured by Iranian forces.

However, the Israeli Defense Forces denied the claims dubbing the news “fake”.

“This news being spread by Iranian media is completely baseless” the IDF’s Arabic spokesperson Col. Avichay Adraee said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on Friday the launch of “Operation Rising Lion” against Iran in an effort to deter the Iranian threat of nuclear weapons to Israel. Netanyahu confirmed the operation will continue until the mission is accomplished.