CrowdKiller said: “Another thing that interests me is that it seems Islamic people (that is if I understand correctly and the assassins were Islamic) have always seemed to have that willingness to die for their faith. Modern suicide bomb attacks in th Middle East, kind of resemble the assasins willingness to die.”

True the assassins were willing to die for their faith but there is no comparision between the assassins and today’s sucide bombers. Assassins always had a logical reason behind the attacks. I am saying this because I had a lot of research on Assassins.

This is definitely the base of the game Assassin’s Creed, as mentioned before, very interesting. You character’s home is at the castle in Masyaf. Saladin and Richard the Lionhearted are mentioned a lot, too. In the beginning, you do a leap of faith off a cliff for your leader into a pile of hey in front of the Crusader army that was attacking the castle :)

The makers of Assassin’s Creed definitely read this article!!!

I want to remind a few points in the article:

1.The nobleman you mentioned in the first paragraph may be Sultan Sanjar,one of Seljuq kings,who wanted to destroy ismai’li fortresses and what the Hashshashin did made him not to do that.

2.Hassan-i-Sabah was born in iran,the city named Rey which is a part of Tehran now.He was Iranian.

3.He went to Neyshabour and studied in Imam Movafagh Neyshabouri’s School.There he met Omar-i-Khayam and Hassan-i-Tousi(who became Malik Shah’s prime minister and finally killed by one of Hashshashin named Bu Taher Avani).They promised if one if them become an important person help the other ones.When Hassan-i-Tousi became the prime minister invited them to the palace and gave them what they wanted,He gave Khayam a salary of 3000 gold coins per year and gave Hassan-i-Sabah a job in the government.After some years he became a very important person but he obliged to leave the government because of the conspiracy Hassan-i-Tousi(Nezam ol Molk) prepared.he went to Cairo and find it a good city but when he knew about the government and the military commanders who had much power in Egypt he went back to Iran(also he was in jail for a short time).There,in Egypt,he knew about isma’ilia and chose that religion.When he came back to Iran started to spread the religion.After ten year he determined to find a place for his followers and he chose Alamut.One of his followers went into the castle and became a guard and opened the gate for them and they captured the castle(when he captured the castle said:”we don’t want to say our prayers in an usurped place,so we want to buy it in the price of leather which is as large as the castle “and the owner agreed.Then he made a narrow strip of leather and turned it around the castle and bought very cheap)

4.They were called Hashshashin because hey made medicines like willow substance(I don’t know the exact translation of johar bid,it’s similar to aspirin we use now),alcohol and medicines out of borage.Hashish meant medicine those days and the men who made it were called Hashshash(sth like pharmacist) and the word”Hashshashin” is arabic plural form of Hashshash.It’s hard to think that who use drugs could performed those perfect assassinations.(each time a man use hashish in a usual amount it kills about 100,000 gray cells in first few minutes)

5.It’s hard to consider that those beautiful gardens where built on the top of mountains where he climate is not suitable enough to make those gardens.I think it was the matter of there faith.

I’ve found some photos of the Alamut and Masyaf:
Alamut
http://gallery.military.ir/albums/userpics/8543144.jpg
http://gallery.military.ir/albums/userpics/218787.jpg
Masyaf
http://gallery.military.ir/albums/userpics/Masyaf6.jpg
http://gallery.military.ir/albums/userpics/Masyaf_-_Gesamtansicht.jpg

http://www.phinnweb.org/neuro/assassins2.html

To the person who asked earlier about the link between the Assassins and the Thuggs, this article at least claims there is.

I like that word. I’ll be sure to namedrop you if I ever use it. But Buddhists–most of us–work hard to sharpen our minds and dull our unpleasant emotions (i.e. hate, jealousy, anger) in a lifelong pursuit of enlightenment and compassion. : )