Ismail al-Ajami

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Ismail al-Ajami ( Arabic إسماعيل العجمي, DMG Ismāʿīl al-ʿAǧamī  'Ismail the Persians'; † 1130 ) was the leading missionary ( dāʿī ) of the Shia of the Nizarites ( Assassins ) in Syria in the early 12th century. In this position he succeeded Bahram, who fell in 1128 .

In Ismail's short leadership time, the position of the Nizarites in Damascus collapsed. Because in the same year as his predecessor, the ruling Atabeg Tughtigin died, under whose benevolent protection the community in Damascus was able to exist. His son Buri, however, as a devout Sunni, was an enemy of their doctrine and ordered the persecution of the Nizarites in 1129. In one of the largest pogroms in medieval Syrian history, several thousand, the numbers in the traditions fluctuate between 6,000 and 20,000, followers of the Shia were murdered. In retaliation for this, Ismail handed over the border fortress of Banyas held by the Nizarites to the Christians of the Kingdom of Jerusalem .

Ismail himself died in the spring of 1130, after which only vague reports are available about the further leadership of the Syrian Nizarites until Raschid ad-Din Sinan († 1193) took over in 1162 .

In the year after Ismail's death, the Nizarites committed two more acts of retaliation against their enemies. On October 7, 1130, their “victims” ( fidāʾīyān ) murdered the Fatimid caliph and imam of the Mustali Ismailis al-Amir on the street in Cairo . On May 7, 1131, two assassins sent from Persia stabbed Atabeg Buri in Damascus while he was on the way from the bathhouse to his palace. Both perpetrators had already disguised as Turkish mercenaries infiltrated the Atabeg's army months earlier and served themselves up in its circle of trust. Buri initially survived the attack, but he died on June 9, 1132, when the poorly healed wounds opened up again during a ride.

literature

  • Farhad Daftary , The Ismāʿīlīs: Their History and Doctrines. Cambridge University Press 1990, pp. 348-349.
  • Heinz Halm , caliphs and assassins. Egypt and the Middle East at the time of the First Crusades 1074–1171. Munich 2014, pp. 174–175, 206.

swell

  • Abū Yaʿlā ibn Asad ibn al-Qalānisī , “Continuation of the story of Damascus” (Ḏail taʾrīḫ Dimašq), ed. and translated by Hamilton AR Gibb, The Damascus Chronicle of the Crusades, (1932), pp. 192-194, 202-204.
  • ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Athīr , "The Perfect Chronicle" (Al-Kāmil fī ʾt-taʾrīḫ), in: RHC, Historiens Orientaux , Vol. 1 (1872), pp. 384–385.
  • The First and Second Crusades from an Anonymous Syriac Chronicle, ed. and translated by Arthur S. Tritton and Hamilton AR Gibb in: Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. 92 (1933), p. 273.