Rasheed al-Din Sinan

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Depiction of Rasheed ad-Din Sinan in a sketch (1966)
Masyaf mountain fortress

Rashid ad-Din Sinan ( Arabic راشد الدين سنان, DMG Rāšid ad-Dīn Sinān ; also Sinan ibn Salman ibn Muhammad or Abu al-Hasan Sinan ibn Sulayman ibn Muhammad ; * about 1133/1135; † 1193 ), called Der Alte vom Berge ( Latin Vetulus de Montanis ), was a sect leader of the Ismaili assassins in Syria before and at the time of the Third Crusade .

Life

Sinan was probably born in southern Iraq . He took over the leadership of the assassins in Syria around 1162 and resided in Masyaf Castle since 1164 . Later, he made himself independent from Persian headquarters and made use of himself as nominal end Fedayeen , to create enemies out of the way. Persian assassins carried out at least two unsuccessful attacks on him because of his arbitrariness. He operated a swing policy between the Sunnis under Saladin and the Crusaders ; he was temporarily allied with the Order of St. John .

Saladin made at least one attempt (1176) to take Masyaf but failed and came to terms with the assassins. Before that, there had been at least two assassinations of Saladin organized by Sinan (1174 to 1176). Like many members of the sect, who kept their faith strictly hidden due to the persecution in Islamic countries, most of the assassins had been adapted to their surroundings for many years and specially prepared for their task through the study of customs and language. Since their own survival was irrelevant according to their ethos, they could be activated at any time after they had gained trust and access. The death of the assassins, who mostly struck with knives in public places, was part of the calculation of the spread of terror and deterrence. Christian chroniclers particularly know his successful attack on Konrad von Montferrat, who has just been appointed King of Jerusalem (1192). Because of the power struggles for the throne in Jerusalem at that time, both Richard I of England (who supported Guido von Lusignan ) and Saladin were suspected to be behind them, but Sinan's own interests as well (according to tradition, Montferrat is said to be a ship owned by the assassins in Tire confiscated and refused surrender). In the case of Konrad von Montferrat, the assassins came to Tire in November 1191 and pretended to be monks. One of them then worked for Konrad for several months.

The Crusader chroniclers were intrigued by the Assassinian practices. Raschid al-Din later found its way into European literature as Der Alte vom Berge (Latin: Vetulus de Montanis). This epithet is mistakenly used again and again to refer to the progenitor of the Assassins, the former Persian Hasan-i Sabbah . The name Der Alte vom Berge is derived from the Arabic title of the assassin leader Sheikh al-Jabal , 'Lord of the Mountains'.

The contemporary information, especially about the teaching of the sect, is often unreliable and attributed all possible murders to the assassins (which in some cases came in handy). The tradition from the Persian center of the assassins in Alamut gives little information about the sect in Syria. In the 19th century, Stanislas Guyard published some sources from Paris manuscripts, fragments on the religious doctrine of Sinan and a hagiography by Abu Firas, which also tells of Sinan's supposed miracles in the style of the time. There is also a biography of Sinan by the historian Kamal al-Din from Aleppo.

Others

In Umberto Eco's novel Baudolino , the protagonist and his friends are kept for several years on the rock castle Raschid ad-Din Sinans, who is called here Aloadin.

In the game Assassin's Creed , Rasheed ad-Din Sinan alias Al Mualim is the leader of the Assassins and the mentor of the main character Altaïr.

literature

  • Farhad Daftary: The Ismailis. Their history and doctrines , New York, Melbourne 1990
  • Farhad Daftary: The Assassin Legends. Myths of the Ismailis , London, New York 1994
  • Bernard Lewis : The Assassins: A radical sect in Islam. New York 1968.
  • Bernard Lewis: Kamal al-Din's Biography of Rashid-al-Din Sinan. In: Arabica. Revue d'études arabes et islamiques. Volume 13, 1966, pp. 225-267.
  • Bernard Lewis: The Ismailites and the Assassins , in: Kenneth M. Setton (Ed.), The History of the Crusades, Volume 1, London 2006, pp. 99-134
  • Stanislas Guyard : Un grand maître des Assassins au temps de Saladin. Paris 1877 (digitized).
  • CE Nowell: The Old Man of the Mountains. In: Speculum . Volume 22, 1948, pp. 497-519
  • Mireille Schnyder: The pillow book of the old man from the mountains , in: Andreas Garth, Mireille Schnyder, Jürgen Wolf (eds.), Book culture and knowledge transfer in the Middle Ages and early modern times, De Gruyter 2011, pp. 203-214

Web links

References and comments

  1. ↑ Date of death according to Bernard Lewis, Arabica 1966. Sometimes 1193/94 is also given
  2. ↑ From Arabic فدائى, DMG Fidā'ī , literal translation: “victim” = fanatical assassin ready for self-sacrifice.
  3. ↑ Yuval Noah Harari : Special Operations in the Age of Chivalry 1100-1550. Boydell Press, 2007, Chapter 4: The Assassination of King Conrad, Tire, 1192, pp. 91-108.
personal data
SURNAME Rasheed al-Din Sinan
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sinan Ibn Salman Ibn Muhammad; Abu al-Hasan Sinan Ibn Sulayman Ibn Muhammad; Sinan Rashid al-Din; Rashid al-Din Sinan; The old man from the mountain
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Sect leader of the Shiite (Ismaili) assassins in Syria before and at the time of the third crusade
DATE OF BIRTH around 1135
DATE OF DEATH 1193