ASSASSINS

ASSASSINS, a fanatical Moslem sect organised in the 11th century, at the time of the Crusades, under a chief called the Old Man of the Mountain, whose stronghold was a rock fortress at Alamut, in Persia, devoted to the assassination of all enemies of the Moslem faith, and so called because they braced their nerves for their deeds of blood by draughts of an intoxicating liquor distilled from hashish (the hemp-plant). A Tartar force burst upon the horde in their stronghold in 1256, and put them wholesale to the sword.