History of Assassins: Tracing Modern Killers' Origins to the Holy Crusades

Assassins are depicted throughout history, appearing in various battles throughout time. But where did the concept of assassination generate? The answer is in the Middle East, around the time of the Holy Crusades, a massive armed pilgrimage of western Europe. There are very few primary sources that refer to the assassins. This paper will use two of the best, both found in The Crusades translated by S.J. Allen and Emilie Amt. This book contains various documents surrounding the Crusades.

The assassins are said to hold at any given moment forty-thousand fighting men, this could possibly be blown out of proportion dramatically but it is unknown. Their lands stretched across the Levant, the land surrounding Jerusalem. Large stones marked it, on the side of the Christians the stones bore a cross, on the side of the Assassins, a knife. It is interesting to note that the concept of a knife representing assassins in video games actually generated as early as 1095.

The assassins operated in single man operations across the Middle East for price. Conrad I, a nearly crowned king of Jerusalem was slain by an assassin several days before his official crowning, sending the Holy Land in much disarray. The assassins' operations in secrecy also developed at this time, leaving the surrounding lands completely terrified of them; the unknown is a powerful tool in combat.

It is typically considered that the assassins followed a single leader who was crowned by merit alone, not heritage. He was referred to as The Old Man of the Mountain, and supposedly possessed the wisest mind of the assassins.