Hassan-i Sabbah dies at Alamut

1115

The founder of the Nizari Ismailis of Alamut, the original Old Man of the Mountain, died in his mountain fortress in northern Persia after forty years of state-building. His successors inherited a network of impregnable castles and disciplined daggers. Hassan had turned assassination into a strategic weapon, dispatching lone killers against Seljuk viziers and generals with a theatrical precision that made the word itself synonymous with targeted murder.