The term 'Assassin' is thought to be derived from its connections to the Hashshashin, a militant religious sect of
Ismaili Muslims, thought to be active in the Middle East in the 8th to 14th centuries. This mystic
secret society killed members of the
Abbasid elite for political or religious reasons.
It was said that they were drugged during their murders, often with materials such as
hashish and
opium. The name
assassin is derived from either
hasishin for the supposed influence of the drugs, and disregard for their own lives in the process, or
hassansin for their leader,
Hassan-i-Sabah. The above, however, relies heavily on second-hand information from crusader-authored histories which have been traditionally very unreliable for information about native cultures.
Today, it is known that
hashishinnya was an offensive term used to depict this cult by its Muslim and Mongolian detractors; the extreme zeal and cold preparation to murder makes it unlikely they ever used drugs. As far as is known they only used daggers, rarely survived their attacks, even when successful (unlike in many tales, where they are silent, invisible killers) and it seems that they rarely acted against westerners during the Crusades, partly because the crusading orders were not as affected by losing individual leaders as were the autocratic local regimes of the time
t: Who doesn't love Abe Lincon singing a long?
:vadernoooooo:
