Free The Assassins by Bernard Lewis

while such places as were unaffected by his blandishments he seized with slaughter, ravishment, pillage, bloodshed, and war. He took such castles as he could and wherever he found a suitable rock he built a castle upon it.'12 An important success was the capture by assault of the castle of Lamasar in Io96 or I I02.- 3 The attackers were led by Kiya Burzurgumid, who remained there as commandant for twenty years. Strategically situated on a rounded rock overlooking the Shah Rud, this castle confirmed the power of the Ismailis in the whole Rudbar area.
Far away to the south-east lay the barren, mountainous country of Quhistan, near the present border between Persia and Afghanistan. Its population lived in a scattered and isolated group of oases surrounded on all sides by the great salt desert of the central plateau. In early Islamic times, this region had been one of the last refuges of Zoroastrianism; converted to Islam, it became a resort of Shiite and other religious dissidents and, later, of the Ismailis. In io9i-2 Hasan-i Sabbah sent a missionary to Quhistan, to mobilize and extend Ismaili support. His choice fell on Husayn Qa'ini, an able da'i who had played some role in the conversion of Alamut, and who was himself of Quhistani origin. His mission was immediately successful. The population of Quhistan were chafing under Seljuq rule; an oppressive Seljuq officer, it is said, brought matters to a head by demanding the sister of the highly respected local lord, who thereupon defected to the Ismailis. What happened in Quhistan was more than secret subversion, more than the seizure of castles; it assumed almost the character of a popular rising, a movement for independence from alien, military domination. In many parts of the province the Ismailis rose in open revolt, and seized control of several of the main towns - Zuzan, Qa'in, Tabas, Tun, and others. In eastern Quhistan, as in Rudbar, they succeeded in creating what was virtually a territorial state.14

Mountainous areas had obvious advantages for the Ismaili strategy of expansion. Another such area lay in South Western Persia, in the region between Khuzistan and Fars. There too there were the necessary conditions for success - difficult country, a turbulent and disaffected population, a strong local tradition of Shiite and Ismaili loyalties. The Ismaili leader in this area was Abu Hamza, a shoemaker from Arrajan who had been to Egypt and returned as a Fatimid da'i. He seized two castles, a few miles from Arrajan, and used them as a base for further activity., 5
While some Ismaili missionaries were acquiring and consolidating positions of strength in remote outposts, others were carrying their religious propaganda into the main centres of Sunni orthodoxy and Seljuq power. It was they who brought about the first bloodshed involving Ismaili agents and the Seljuq authorities. The first incident occurred in a small town called Sava, in the northern plateau not far from Rayy and Qumm, perhaps even before the capture of Alamut. A group of eighteen Ismailis was arrested by the police-chief for joining together in separate prayers. This was their first such meeting, and after questioning they were allowed to go free. They then tried to convert a muezzin from Sava who was living in Isfahan. He refused to respond to their appeal and the Ismailis, fearing that he would denounce them, murdered him. He, says the Arabic historian Ibn al-Athir, was their first victim, and his was the first blood that they shed. News of this murder reached the vizier, Nizam al-Mulk, who personally gave orders for the execution of the ringleader. The man accused was a carpenter called Tahir, the son of a preacher who had held various religious offices, and had been lynched by a mob in Kerman as a suspected Ismaili. Tahir was executed and made an example of, and his body dragged through the market-place. He, says Ibn al-Athir, was the first Ismaili to be executed.16

In io92 the Seljuqs made their first