Clémentine Portier-Kaltenbach 5:30 p.m., January 14, 2022
In the north of present-day Iran, are the ruins of the fortress of Alamut, built in the 9th century AD, and whose name is associated with the black legend of the Assassins.
At the end of the 11th century, the fortress was the stronghold of the Hashashin sect led by the Ismaili leader Hassan ibn al-Sabbah.
Nicknamed "the old man of the mountain", he trained his disciples in political assassination and, according to the accounts of the Italian traveler Marco Polo (1254-1324), manipulated them by making them ingest hashish...
The legend of the Assassins was notably popularized in 1938 by the novel
Alamut
by the Slovenian writer Vladimir Bartol (1903-1967), available from Libretto editions.