Tag Archive | "Ismailis"

Page copy protected against web site content infringement by Copyscape

"The Assassins" of Angels & Daemons

Dan Brown has a knack for taking history, and using the mysteries of symbols to create fabulous thrillers. His magnificent book “The Da Vinci Code” was based on factual books by Michael Baigent Ms. Alaine Pagels etc. While the “Da Vinci Code is a work of fiction Baegent’s “The Jesus Papers” is not fiction. Pagels and others have shed light on the Gnostic Bibles and the other possibilities for the death of Jesus and the possibility that he may have survived the Crucifixion. All this would have remained conjecture–but then a few decades ago The Naag Hamidi texts and the Red Sea Scrolls began to appear on the scene. Though Israel has hid many of the papers, the authenticity of the doucments sheds light on Christianity as never before.

The novels of Dan Brown dive between fact and fiction of the Templars, the Crusaders, Modern Science, and the mysteries of the Gnostic Bibles. The result is fascinating reading material.

the genocidal crusade against the “Albigensian” (as they were called at the time) heretics from 1208-1229 in what is now southwestern France was very real. Pope Innocent III’s frothing anathemas against the enemy destroying Christendom from within; the massed armies of martial pilgrims raised against them; the officially sanctioned slaughter of entire villages—all of this was real. So was the torture, and the confessions, and realest of all was the triumphant reinforcement of doctrinal and institutional authority for the Church, and the expansion of the French Crown’s power into the region between the Garonne and the Rhône rivers.

But the Cathar heresy itself was the lurid fabrication of a paranoid and aggressive Church looking for enemies: “Everything about the Cathars is utter fantasy,” writes medieval historian Mark Gregory Pegg, and such is the boldly iconoclastic thesis of his recent book, A Most Holy War: the Albigensian Crusade and the Battle for Christendom (Oxford, 2008). The Cathars (as the “heretics” were retroactively labeled centuries later) and their heresy was the creation of a vindictive Church–a papal legate was murdered in the area that was subsequently targeted for the crusade–eager to demonstrate its might and authority. The coherent heretical doctrine that the churchmen cooked up was the perfect mirror image of the Fourth Lateran Council’s new doctrines formulated in 1215. Since then, the myth of a Cathar heresy flourishing in what is now southwestern France has been nurtured by many a New Age seeker after hidden knowledge and by a perhaps greater number of accredited historians.

So why bring this up now? This past weekend saw the national opening of Angels & Demons, a movie which, like The DaVinci Code, is based on Dan Brown’s bestselling spiritualist conspiracy thrillers. The Code was about the hidden survival of the Cathar heresy despite centuries of Papal suppression… The True History of the 13th Century European Genocide and What It Means Today, Angels & Demons and the Extraordinary Power of Imaginary Heretics By CHASE MADAR

Noticias de Rupia | Nouvelles de Roupie | Rupiennachrichten | ??????? ????? | ???? | Roepienieuws | Rupi Nyheter | ??????? | Notizie di Rupia | The Dawn | Military Strategy | Strategic Thinking and Policy Institute | Failed States | Pakistan Historian | Gandhi Unmasked | PAKISTAN LEDGER |  ???????? ????? RUPEE NEWS  | May 13th, 2009 | Moin Ansari | ????? ????? | Page copy protected against web site content infringement by Copyscape

During the 2nd Council of Nicea in 328 AD called by the Roman Emperor Constantine, a Christian detractor Arius led the fight for monotheism rather than trinity. He lost, and Trinity was imposed on the Roman Empire. The Gnostics were persecuted, all the books burned and the followers of Arius were hounded and murdered all over the Middle East. One reason for the galloping success of Islam in the Middle East was because it carried the flag of Arius and monotheism. Serious readers can investigate the details here. PROPHET MUHAMMAD IN THE CHRISTIAN CONTEXT

Islam has all along contended that Jesus was never crucified and this was bought by many intellectuals of the time include DaVinci, Copernicus, Newton, and John Locke. Other great proponents of the death of Jesus were Madison, Hamilton and even Jefferson. Thomas Jefferson in fact combined the four books of the New Testament and combined them in what is called “The Jefferson Bible“. It is American tradition that the Jefferson Bible is giving to every new member of the US Congress. The Library of Congress records indicate that Thomas Jefferson owned a copy of the Quran. When he lost a copy, he went to great lengths to purchase another copy. Current American literature call Jefferson and the other founding fathers as “Deists”. Sir issac newton in fact wrote a book about the the Errors of Scriptures. He was severely punished for highlighting the facts which are abundant in the Quran–namely that Jesus was a man and not God. Cervantes was burned at the stake by Presbyterian John Calvin for holding the same beliefs. If the Deists were alive today,  would many call them Muslims?

Dan Brown wrote Angels and Daemons before he wrote Da Vinci Code. Angles and Daemons shed light on the Assassins. We have written about The Jesus Papers and Michael Baigent extensively. We have also written about Muhammad in the Christian context. The prodigious Amin Maalouf describes the history of the Assassins in an effulgent andprolific manner in his book “Crusades though Arab Eyes”. It describes how the Ismaili Assassins (forefathers of the now peaceful Ismailis and Agha Khanis) tried to destroy the Caliphate of Egypt and almost succeeded.

The Hashshashin (also Hashishin, Hashashiyyin, or Hashasheen) from which the word assassin is thought to originate, was the Persian derived designation of the Nizari branch of the Ism?’?l? Shia Muslims during the Middle Ages. The Nizari or Hashshashin as they were designated by their enemies split from the Fatmid Isma’iliEmpire following a dispute regarding the succession of their spiritual and political leader the Fatimid Caliph Ma’ad al-Mustansir Billah.

They are survived by the Shia Imami Isma’ili Muslims in the contemporary world, otherwise known as the Nizari, and are currently led by the Aga Khan IV their 49th Imam. Wiki

The Ismaili Assassins of the Middle Ages were quiet tolerant of the Crusade aggression, and therefore have been accused of collaboration with the enemies of the Muslims.

The Catholic villain of Dan Brown uses the knowledge of the Assassins to murder and kill his victims in the grand tradition of the Illuminati (fore-bearers of the Freemasons), a Christian sect which opposed the Vatican and Catholicism. Newton, Da Vici, DaVinci, Copernicus, Newton,  John Locke, Madison, Hamilton and even Jefferson. Dan Brown uses Illuminati symbolism to expose the secrets of the the citadel of Catholicism–The Vatican.

Dan Brown is fascinating to read, specially if one researches the points that he brings up in his writings. Here is some more background into Dan Brown’s fiction.

Noticias de Rupia | Nouvelles de Roupie | Rupiennachrichten | ??????? ????? | ???? | Roepienieuws | Rupi Nyheter | ??????? | Notizie di Rupia | The Dawn | Military Strategy | Strategic Thinking and Policy Institute | Failed States | Pakistan Historian | Gandhi Unmasked | PAKISTAN LEDGER |  ???????? ????? RUPEE NEWS  | May 13th, 2009 | Moin Ansari | ????? ????? | Page copy protected against web site content infringement by Copyscape

We know now that the astonishing perspicacity and tenacity Ibn al-Khashâb [Note - the qadi (judge) of Aleppo] not only saved the city [Aleppo, Syria] from occupation, but also contributed more than anything else to preparing the way for the great leaders of jihâd against the invaders [Note - the Crusaders]. But the qadi would not leave to see these events. One day in the summer of 1125, as he was leaving the great mosque of the Aleppo after the midday prayer, a man disguised as an ascetic leapt upon him and sunk a dagger into his chest. It was an act of revenge by the Assassins, Ibn al-Khashâb had been the sect’s most intransigent opponent, has spilled buckets of its adherents’ blood, andhad never repented of his actions. He must have know that some day he would pay withhis life. For a third of a century, no enemy of the Assassins had ever managed to elude them.

This sect, the most terrifying every seen, had been founded in 1090 (C.E) by a man of immense culture, a devotee of poetry profoundly interested in the latest advances of science. Hasan ibn al-Sabbâh was born around 1048 in the city of Rayy, close by the site where the town of Tehran would be founded a dozen years later. Was he really, as legend claims, an inseparable companion of the young poet Omar Khayyam, himself a devotee of mathematics andastronomy? It is not known with certainty. On the other hand, the circumstances that led this brilliant man to dedicate his life to organising this sect are known in detail.

At this time of Hasan’s birth, the Shi’i doctrine, to which he adhered, was dominant in Muslim Asia. Syria belonged to the Fatamids of Egypt, and another Shi’i dynasty, the Buwayhids, controlled Persia and dictated orders at will to the ‘Abbasid caliph in Baghdad itself. During Hasan’s youth, however, the situation was radically reversed. The Seljuks, upholders of Sunni orthodoxy, took control of the entire region. Shi’ism, triumphant only a short time before, was now only barely tolerated, often persecuted, doctrine.

Hasan, who grew up in a milieu of religious Persians, was indignant at this state of affairs. Towards 1071 he decided to settle in Egypt, the last bastion of Shi’ism. But what he discovered in the land of the Nile was hardly cause for elation. The aged Fatimid caliph al-Mustansir was even more of a puppet than his ‘Abbasid rival. He no longer dared even to leave his palace without the permission of his Armenian vizier, Badr al-Jamâlî, the father and predecessor of al-Afdal. In Cairo Hasan met many religious fundamentalists who shared his apprehension and sought, like him, to reform the Shi’i caliphate and to take revenge on the Seljuks.

A movement took shape, headed by Nizâr, the older son of the caliph. The Fatamid heir, as pious as he was courageous, had no intention of abandoning himself to the pleasures of this court, nor of acting as a puppet in the hands of some vizier. When his elderly father died, which could not now be long, he meant to succeed him and, with the aid of Hasan and his friends, to inaugurate a new golden age for the Shi’is. A detailed plan was prepared, of which Hasanwas the principal architect. The Persian militant would return to the heart of the Seljuk empire to pave the way for the reconquest that Nizâr would most assuredly undertake upon his accession to power.

Hasansucceeded beyond his wildest dreams, but the methods very different from those imagined by the virtuous Nizâr. In 1090 he took the fortress of Alamût by suprise. The bastion, the ‘eagle’s nest’, was situated in a practically inaccessible region of the Albruz Mountains near the Caspian Sea. Once he commanded this inviolable sanctuary, Hasan set about establishing a politico-religious organisation whose effectiveness and spirit of discipline would be unequalled in all history.

All members, from novices to the grand master, were ranked to their level of knowledge, reliability and courage. They underwent intensive training courses of indoctrination as well as physical training. Hasan’s favourite technique for sowing terror among his enemies was murder. The members of the sect were sent individually – or more rarely, in small groups of two or three – on assignments to kill some chosen personality. They generally disguised themselves as merchants or ascetics andmoved aroundin the city where the crime was to be perpetrated, familiarising themselves with the habits of their victims. Then, once their plan was ready, they struck. Although the preparation was always conducted in the utmost secrecy, the execution has to take place in the public, indeed before the largest crowd. That was why the preferred site was a mosque, the favourite day Friday, generally at noon. For Hasan, murder was not merely a means of disposing an enemy, but was intended primarily as a twofold lesson for the public: first, the punishment of the victim, and, second, the heroic sacrifice of the executioner, who was called fidâ’î (plural : fidâ’în, or fedayeen), or ‘suicide commando’, because he was almost always cut down on the spot.

The serenity withwhich the members of the sect accepted their own deathled their contemporaries to believe that they were drugged with hashish, which is why they were called hashashûn, or hashîshîn, a word that was distorted into ‘Assassin’ andsoon incorporated into many languages as a common noun. The hypothesis is plausible, but like everything else to do withthis sect, it is difficult to separate legend from reality. Did Hasanencourage the adherents to drug themselves so that they had a sense of being in paradise for a short time, which would thus encourage them to seek martyrdom? Or, more prosaically, was he trying to accustom them to a narcotic in order to keep them dependent on him? Was he simply urging them towards a state of euphoria so that they would not falter at the moment of murder? Or did he instead rely on their blind faith? Whatever the answer, merely to list the hypotheses is to pay tribute of the exceptional organiser Hasan must have been.

Indeed, his success was stunning. The first murder, committed in 1092, two years after the sect was founded, was an epic unto itself. The Seljuks were at an apogee of their power. The pillar of their empire, the man who over thirty years had created a state out of the lands conquered by Turkish warriors, the architect of the renaissance of Sunni power and of the struggle against Shi’ism, was an old vizier who name itself evoked his deeds: Nizâm al-Mulk, or ‘Order of the Realm’. On 14 October 1492 one of Hasan’sadherents killed him with a sword-stroke. When Nizâm al-Mulk was assissinated, Ibn al-Athîr wrote, the state disintegrated. Indeed, the Seljuk empire never recovered its unity. Its history would now be punctuated not by further conquests, but by the interminable wars of succession. ‘Mission Accomplished’, Hasan may well have told his comrades in Egypt. The road was now open to a Fatamidreconquest: it was up to Nizâr. In Cairo, however, the insurrection has run aground. Al-Afdal, who inherited the vizierate from his father in 1094, mercilessly crushed the associates of Nizâr, who himself was buried alive.

Islamic Sicily fed the Christian Renaissance

Melungeon Muslims in America escaping the Spanish Inquisition
Expansion of Early Islam in maps: 6th & 7th century

The Muslim Jesus

Noticias de Rupia | Nouvelles de Roupie | Rupiennachrichten | ??????? ????? | ???? | Roepienieuws | Rupi Nyheter | ??????? | Notizie di Rupia | The Dawn | Military Strategy | Strategic Thinking and Policy Institute | Failed States | Pakistan Historian | Gandhi Unmasked | PAKISTAN LEDGER |  ???????? ????? RUPEE NEWS  | May 13th, 2009 | Moin Ansari | ????? ????? | Page copy protected against web site content infringement by Copyscape

Hasan thuse found himself in an unforeseen situation. He has not renounced his goal of reviving the Shi’icaliphate, but he knew that it would take time. He therefore modified his strategy. While continuing to undermine official Islam and its religious and politicalrepresentatives, he also tried to finda place where he could establish an autonomous fiefdom. What country offered better prospects for such a project than Syria, craved up as it was into a multitude of miniscule rival states? The sect has only to establish a base, to play one city against another, one emir against his brother, and it would survive until the Fatamid caliphate emerged from its torpor.

Hasan sent a Persian preacher into Syria, an enigmatic ‘physcian-astrologer’ who settled in Aleppo and managed to win the confidence of Ridwân [note - The King of Aleppo]. Adherents began to converge on the city, to preach their doctrine, to form cells. To preserve the friendship of the Seljuk kin, they agreed to do some small favours for him, in particular to assassinate some of his politicalopponents. Upon the death of the ‘physician-astrologer’ in 1103, the sect immediatly sent Ridwân a new Persian adviser, Abû Tahir, a goldsmith. His influence soon become more overwhelming than that of his predecessor. Ridwân fell completely under his spell, and according to Kamâl al-Dîn, no Aleppancould obtain the slightest favour from the monarch or settle any administrative problem without dealing with one of the innumerable members of the sect scattered though the king’s entourage.

But the Assassins were hated precisely because of their power. Ibn al-Khashâb in particular relentlessly demanded an end to their activities. He detested them not only for the way they bought and sold influence, but also andabove all for their alleged sympathy for the Western invaders [Note - The Crusaders]. However paradoxical it may seem, the accusation was justified. When the Franj[Note - This word is used to describe the Western invaders throughout the book] arrived, the Assassins, who had barely begun to settle in Syria, were called Bâtinis, ‘those who adhere to a faith other than that which they profess in public’. The appellation suggested that the adherents were Muslims only in appearance. The Shi’is, like Ibn al-Khashâb, has no sympathy for the disciples of Hasanbecause of their break with the Fatamid caliphate, which, however weak, remained the formal protector of the Shi’is of the Arab world.

Detested andpersecuted by all the Muslims, the Assassins were not displeased at the arrivalof a Christian army that was inflicting one defeat after another on both the Seljuks and al-Afdal, the murderer of Nizâr. There is no doubt that Ridwân’s outrageously conciliatory attitude towards the Occidentals [Note - The Crusaders] was due in large part to the counsel of the Bâtinis.

Muslims before Columbus in the Caribbean

Muslims in Suriname and Guyana before Columbus

Moorish Marronage Muslims of Jamaica

As far as Ibn al-Khashâb was concerned, the connivance between the Assassins and Franjamounted to treason. He acted accordingly. During the massacres that followed Ridwân’s death at the end of 1113, the Bâtinis were tracked down street by street and house by house. Some were lynched by mobs, others leapt to their deaths from the ramparts of the city walls. Nearly two hundred members of the sect perished in this manner, among them Abû Tahrir the goldsmith. Nevertheless, Ibn al-Qalânisi reports that several of managed to flee and sought refuge among the Franjor dispersed in the countryside.

Even though Ibn al-Khashâb has thus deprived the Assassins their major bastion in Syria, their astonishing career has only just begun. Drawing lessons from their failure, the sect altered its tactics. Hasan’s new envoy to Syria, a Persian progagandist by the name of Bahram, decided to call a temporary halt to all spectacular actions and to return to careful and discreet organisation and infiltration.

Bahram, the Damascene chronicler relates, lived in the greatest secrecy and seclusion, changing his dress and appearance so cleverly that he moved through the cities and strongholds without anyone suspecting his identity.

Within a few weeks, he organised a network powerful enough to contemplate emerging from clandestinity. He found an excellent protector in Ridwân’s replacement.

One day, says Ibn al-Qalânisi, Bahram arrived in Damacus, where the atabeg Tughtigin received him quite correctly, as a precaution against his misdeeds and those of his gang. He was shown great respect andassured of vigilant protection. The second-ranking presonality of the Syrian metropolis, the vizier Tâhir al-Mazdaghâni, came to an understanding with Bahram, although he did not belong to the sect, and helped him to plant his malfeasance wherever he willed.

In fact, despite the death of Hasan ibn al-Sabbâh in his Alamut retreat in 1142, there was sharp recrudescence of the activity of the Assassins. The murder of Ibn al-Khashâb was not an isolated act. A year later, another ‘turbaned resistor’ of the first importance fell under their blows. All the chroniclers relate his assassination with the utmost solemnity, for the man who, in August 1099, had led the first manifestation of popular outrage against the Frankish invasion had become one of the Muslims world’s leading religious authorities. It was announced from Iraq that the qâdi of qâdis of Baghdad, the splendor of Islam, Abû Sa’ad al-Harawi, has been attacked by Bâtinis in the great mosque of Hamadân. They had stabbed him to death andfled immediately, leaving no clue or trace behind them. The crime aroused great indignation in Damascus, where al-Harawi had lived for may years. The activities of the Assassins were now by provoking mounting hostility, especially in religious circles. The best of the faithful were furious, but they held their tongue, because the Bâtinis had begun killing those who resited them and supporting those who approved their aberrations. No one dared to criticise them publicly, neither emir, nor vizier, nor sultan.

The terror was understandable. On 26 November 1126 al-Borsoki himself, the powerful master of Aleppo and Mosul, suffered the terrible vengeance of the Assassins.

And yet, wrote Ibn al-Qalânisi in astonishment, the emir has been on his guard. He wore a coat of mail that could not be penetrated by sabre or knife-blade, and he was always surrounded by soldiers armed to the teeth. But there is no escape from fate. Al-Borsoki had gone, as usual, to the great mosque of Mosul to say his Friday prayers. The scoundrels were there, dressed as Sufis, praying in a corner without arousing any suspicion. Suddenly they leapt upon him and struck him several blows, though without piercing his coat of mail. When the Bâtinis saw that the daggers had not harmed the emir, one of them cried: ‘Strike high, at his head!’ They struck him in the throat and and knife thrusts rained down upon him. Al-Borsoki died a martyr, andhis murderers were put to death.

Never had the threat represented by the Assassins been so serious. They were no longer simply pests, but had become a plague torturing the Arab world at a time when all its energies were required to confront the Frankish occupation. Moreover, the skein of killings was not yet fully unraveled. A few months after the death of al-Borsoki, his son, who succeeded him, was in turn assassinated. Four rival emirs then contented for power in Aleppo, and Ibn al-Khashâb was no longer on the scene to maintain a minimum of cohesion. In autumn 1127, as the city sank into anarchy, the young son of the great Bohemund(Note – One of the leaders of the Crusaders), a huge blondman of eighteen who had just arrived from his homelandto take possession of this familial heritage. He bore his father’s first name and also possessed his impetuous character. The Aleppans lost no time in paying tribute to him, and the most defeatist already saw him as the future conqueror of their city.

Noticias de Rupia | Nouvelles de Roupie | Rupiennachrichten | ??????? ????? | ???? | Roepienieuws | Rupi Nyheter | ??????? | Notizie di Rupia | The Dawn | Military Strategy | Strategic Thinking and Policy Institute | Failed States | Pakistan Historian | Gandhi Unmasked | PAKISTAN LEDGER |  ???????? ????? RUPEE NEWS  | May 13th, 2009 | Moin Ansari | ????? ????? | Page copy protected against web site content infringement by Copyscape

Linguistic heritage of Pre-Columbus Muslims

Cherokee Muslims in the USA before Columbus

Current day Muslims in Germany

Muslims brought about the renaissance in Spain 3 centuries before Italy

This situation in Damascus was no less tragic. The atabeg Tughtigin, ageing and sick, no longer exercised the slightest control over the Assassins. They had their own armed militia, the city administration was in their hands, and the vizier al-Mazdaghâni, who was devoted to them body andsoul, had established close contacts with Jerusalem. For his part, Baldwin II made no secret of his intention to crown his career by taking the Syrian metropolis. Only the presence of the aged Tughtigin seemed still to prevent the Assassins from handing the city to the Franj. But the reprieve was to be brief. By 1128 the atabeg was visibly wasting away andcould no longer rise from his bed. Plots were being hatched at his bedside. He finally expired on 12 February, after designating his son Bûri as his successor. The Damascenes were convinced that the fall of their city was now only a matter of time.

Discussing this critical period of Arab history a century later, Ibn al-Athîr would write with good reason:

Withthe death of Tughtigin, the last man capable of confronting the Franj was gone. The latter then seemed in a position to occupy all of Syria. But God in his infinite kindness took pity on the Muslims. The History of the Assassins Amin Maalouf, Taken from the Book, “The Crusades through Arab Eyes” pp.98 – 105 Published by al-Saqi Books.

 

Muslims of Sri Lanka

 

 

 

 

 Thai Occupied Muslim Sultanate of Patani”

 

 

 

Muslims in Latin America before Columbus


 

THE PAKISTANI RIVIERA
The Mekan Coast of the Blue Sea

Turkey takes a turn towards Islam Burmese Muslims a forgotten minority

Posted in Authors, Books, Books Crit, Current Affairs, History, Mus histComments (0)


Categories

Archives