13 quotes found
"They call him "Shaykh-al-Hashishim". He is their Elder, and upon his command all of the men of the mountain come out or go in ... they are believers of the word of their elder and everyone everywhere fears them, because they even kill kings."
"[They] were accustomed to kill people secretively. Some people approached him [the nobleman Orghan] while he was walking on the street … When he stopped and wanted to inquire … they jumped upon him from here and there, and with the sword which they had concealed, stabbed and killed him … They killed many people and fled through the city … They encroached upon the fortified places … as well as the forests of Lebanon, taking their blood-price from their prince … They went many times wherever their prince sent them being frequently in various disguises until they found the appropriate moment to strike and then to kill whomever they wanted. Therefore all the princes and kings feared them and paid tax to them."
"For Brocardus, the Assassins are hired, secret murderers, of a peculiarly skillful and dangerous kind. Though naming them among the hazards of the East, he does not explicitly connect them with any particular place, sect, or nation, nor ascribe any religious beliefs or political purposes to them. They are simply ruthless and competent killers, and must be guarded against as such. Indeed, by the thirteenth century, the word Assassin, in variant forms, had already passed into European usage in this general sense of hired professional murderer."
"The emergence of the new monarchies, in which one man could determine the politics and religion of the state, made assassination an effective as well as an acceptable weapon."
"Hammer compares the Assassins with the Templars, the Jesuits, the Illuminati, the Freemasons, and the regicides of the French National Convention. `As in the west, revolutionary societies arose from the bosom of the Freemasons, so in the east, did the Assassins spring from the Ismailites ... The insanity of the enlighteners, who thought that by mere preaching, they could emancipate nations from the protecting care of princes, and the leading-strings of practical religion, has shown itself in the most terrible manner by the effects of the French revolution, as it did in Asia, in the reign of Hassan II."
"... the progress of Ismaili studies has been rapid and remarkable ... The resulting picture of the Assassins differs radically both from the lurid rumours and fantasies brought back from the East by mediaeval travellers, and from the hostile and distorted image extracted by nineteenth-century orientalists from the manuscript writings of orthodox Muslim theologians and historians, whose main concern was to refute and condemn, not to understand or explain. The Assassins no longer appear as a gang of drugged dupes led by scheming impostors, as a conspiracy of nihilistic terrorists, or as a syndicate of professional murderers. They are no less interesting for that."
"There is not a single cultural element of Central Asian, Eastern European or Caucasian origin in the archaeological culture of the Mittanian area [….] But there is one element novel to Iraq in Mittanian culture and art, which is later on observed in Iranian culture until the Islamisation of Iran: the peacock..."
"The numerals are distinctively Indic not Iranian; aika is identical with the Sanskrit eka while ' one ’ in Zend is aeva. So the s is preserved in Satta where it becomes h in Iranian (hapta) and the exact form is found, not indeed in Sanskrit, but in the Prakrits which were supposed to be post-Vedic. Even the personal names look Indic rather than Iranian."
"Our dating of the Indo-Aryan element in the Mitanni texts is based purely and simply on written documents offering datable contexts. While we cannot with certainty push these dates prior to the fifteenth century BC. It should not be forgotten that the Indic elements seem to be little more than the residue of a dead language in Hurrian, and that the symbiosis that produced the Mitanni may have taken place centuries earlier."
"The Nuzi archives, from the Mitanni vassal state of Arraphe (Kirkuk), contain the only sources on Hurrian society in Mesopotamia. These texts, which date to the late fifteenth and fourteenth centuries BC, provide glimpses of peasants and craftsmen working for the king and paid in rations, and of rich individuals in possession of estates, the latter often acquired by fictive inheritance under the terms of adoption in return for a gift. In Nuzi, women held a special position and enjoyed extensive rights."
"They were Indian heroes, who rode westward and with their precious weapon the war horse and their own ardent energy made themselves felt as a power far and wide in the aging Babylonian Empire."
"But in the selfsame valleys of the Indus we think we see at work that cleavage which parted cognate races from those returning southwards to their ancient home, and drove them westwards to the broad expanse of hither-Asia, where in course of time we find them as conquerors and founders of mighty dynasties, erecting ever more explicit monuments to History."
"The king pierced the lines of the miserable Khita. He was alone. He turned to look behind him, and, lo! around him were two thousand five hundred chariots of the vile Khita. Each chariot bore three men. The king had with him no chief, no marshal, no captain, no officer. Fled were his troops and his horses! Then lifted he up his voice to God, and said, "I call on thee, Father Ammon. I am amid unknown multitudes. Nations are gathered against me. My numerous soldiers have forsaken me. When I called to them not one listened to my voice. But I think Ammon worth more to me than a million of soldiers. I have never disobeyed thy word. Lo, have I not glorified thee, even to the ends of the earth?" Ammon heard when I called. He gave me his hand. He called to me, from behind: "Ramses, Miamon, I hasten to thy aid. It is I, thy Father. I am worth to thee more than a hundred thousand men." My prayer was answered. To the right I hurled my arrows. To the left I overthrew mine enemy. I was like Baar in his fury. The twenty-five hundred chariots encircling me were broken into splinters. Not a Khitan finds a hand to fight with. Their hearts faint within them, and fear palsies their limbs. I tumbled them into the waters like crocodiles. Head first I pitched them over, one after the other. I slew them by thousands! Then called the king to his archers, to his cavalry, to his chiefs who had failed to fight. He said, "Of what profit are such cowards? Is there one among you who has done his duty to his country? Had I not been given power from above, ye would all have perished. Every day I have made some of you princes. To sons, I have transmitted the honors of their fathers. If any evil has happened to Egypt I have not held you responsible. Whoever has come to me with his complaints, it is I who have administered justice, in person. Never did royal master for his soldiers what I have done for you. Yet you have played the coward, all of you. Not one of you stood by me when I had to fight. What a military deed is this to present at the Theban altar as an offering to Ammon! What a shame! What a disgrace, and to my soldiers, and to my cavalry! Yet the whole world has seen the path of my victory and my might. People saw it, and will repeat my name even in remote and unknown lands. Of the millions who saw me to-day, not one paused in his flight. All dropped their arrows and fled or turned to me in supplication.""