The Assassins

First published in 1967, this history reconstructs the Nizari Ismaili movement that medieval Crusaders and Sunni writers called the Assassins. Lewis follows the sect from Fatimid and Ismaili origins through Hasan-i Sabbah's seizure of Alamut in the late eleventh century, the strategy of targeted killing, and the mountain castles of Persia and Syria, to the Mongol destruction of Alamut and the later fate of the communities. He reads hostile chronicles against the sect's own traditions and sets the fidai within Islamic schism and Seljuk-Crusader politics. The book is a political and religious history of one Shia current, not a general survey of assassination and not a novel.

Bound in red cloth, cover blocked with an image in gilt, green and black. Plain red slipcase.