The eagle returns: evidence of continued Isma'ili activity at Alamut and in the south Caspian region following the Mongol conquests.

• Author: Virani, Shafique N.

None of that people should be spared, not even the babe in its cradle. --Edict of Chingiz Khan and Mangu Qa'an (1) It is generally believed that the fall of the castle of Alamut in A.H. 654 (A.D. 1256) marks the end of the Isma'ili influence in Gilan. This is a great mistake. --Hyacinth L. Rabino (2) The catastrophic Mongol incursions into the heart of the Muslim world during the thirteenth century left a path of death and destruction in their wake. Though the assaults succeeded in vanquishing Baghdad, toppling the Muslim caliph himself, it is notable that the famous contemporary historian, 'Ata-Malik Juwayni, does not describe this as the pinnacle of Mongol conquest. Rather, for this Sunni historian, the zenith and culmination of the Mongol invasion is the obliteration of the tiny rival enclave of the Isma'ilis, a Shi'i sect centered at the mountain fortress of Alamut. It is to this singular event that Juwayni dedicates the concluding one-third of his History of the World Conqueror. (3)

Ibn al-Athir and later historians record a charming anecdote about this fortress. Apparently, Wahsudan b. Marzuban, one of the Justanid rulers of Daylam, was on a hunting expedition when he saw a soaring eagle alight on a rock. Noticing how strategically ideal the site was, the ruler decided to build a castle there that was henceforth called Aluh amu[kh]t, which may mean "the eagle's teaching," ta'lim al-'uqab in Ibn al-Athir's rendering. The name, later simplified to Alamut, is significant in at least two ways. As noticed by a number of historians, in the traditional abjad system of alpha-numeric correspondence, the name is a chronogram for the year 483 A.H., corresponding to A.D. 1090, the very year that Hasan Sabbah, the champion of the Nizari Isma'ili cause, came into possession of the fortress. From them on, it became the home of the Nizaris, the ta'limiyya, as they came to be known, reflecting their emphasis on the need for authoritative instruction (ta'lim) and reminiscent of this delightful story about the ta'lim al-'uqab, the eagle's teaching. (4)

The Mongols sought a complete destruction of Alamut and the extermination of the Isma'ilis. Many of the Persian historians, led by Juwayni, believed that they were successful in this endeavor. Until recently, the complete extermination of the Isma'ilis in the face of the Mongol behemoth was also accepted as fact in Western scholarship. Perhaps the first person to draw attention in orientalist circles to the continued existence of the Isma'ilis as well as to their local traditions and literature was Jean Baptiste L. J. Rousseau (d. 1831), who was the French consul-general in Aleppo from 1809 to 1816 and a long-time resident of the Near East. He came across the Nizaris in Syria and highlighted their sorry plight after their 1809 massacre at the hands of the Nusayris. He was also much surprised, during his participation as a member of an official French mission sent to the court of the Persian monarch Fath 'Ali Shah (d. 1834), to find that the community flourished in Iran as well. He wrote a letter about his findings to the famous Parisian scholar, A. I. Sylvestre de Sacy, who quoted it at the end of his pivotal study "Memoire sur la dynastie des Assassins, et sur l'etymologie de leur Nom." (5)

However, this information was scarcely noticed in orientalist circles. It was only with the pioneering efforts of Wladimir Ivanow in the following century that the community finally emerged from academic obscurity. While its continued survival had now become clear, what has hitherto been largely underestimated, if not often unnoticed, is the fact of continued Isma'ili activity in the regions of Gilan, Daylam, and Mazandaran, including at the fort of Alamut itself, in the wake of the Mongol invasions. This was first suggested by Hyacinth Louis Rabino (d. 1950), the British vice-consul in Rasht whose writings contributed significantly to scholarship on the south Caspian region. (6) Little use was made of Rabino's findings in this regard until Farhad Daftary revisited the issue briefly in his work, The Isma'ilis: Their History and Doctrines. (7) Slightly later, Maryam Mu'izzi contributed new insights in her M.A. thesis, completed at Firdawsi University in Mashhad. (8)

In this article it is maintained that Isma'ili activity in the region in the aftermath of the Mongol invasions was even greater than previously suspected. Inconsistencies and exaggerations in Juwayni's testimony; a correction of his narrative based on other historians, including Rashid al-Din; and the evidence of regional histories, geographical tomes and inscriptions clearly point to sustained Isma'ili presence in the region. This evidence is further supported by the fifteenth-century Nasa'ih-i Shah-Rukhi, a hostile Khurasani source that clearly indicates that Alamut was a center of the Isma'ili da'wa to which community funds were sent. The testimony of the Nasa'ih is supported by that of the da'wa literature of the Indian subcontinent, which provides very suggestive evidence that the residence of the Imam Islam Shah was Alamut. From this, it becomes clear that the south Caspian region continued, perhaps sporadically, as an important center of the Isma'ili community for over a century after the Mongol irruption. The eagle had, so to speak, returned.

A CORRECTIVE TO 'ATA-MALIK JUWAYNI'S NARRATIVE

The Mongol invasions were undoubtedly a singular event in Islamic history. The cataclysmic proportions of this catastrophe moved contemporary writers to predict the imminent end of the world. (9) Ibn al-Athir, who himself had witnessed the destruction wrought by the marauding invaders, prefaced his account of the conquest as follows:

I have been avoiding mentioning this event for many years because I consider it too horrible. I have been advancing with one foot and retreating with the other. Who could easily write the obituary of Islam and the Muslims? For whom could it be easy to mention it? Would that my mother had not given birth to me, would that I had died before it happened and had been a thing forgotten. However, a group of friends urged me to record it since I knew it first-hand. Then I saw that to refrain from it would profit nothing. Therefore, we say: this deed encompasses mention of the greatest event, the most awful catastrophe that has befallen time. It engulfed all beings, particularly the Muslims. Anyone would be right in saying that the world, from the time God created humans until now, has not been stricken by its like. Histories contain nothing that even approaches it. (10) As Morgan convincingly argues, it was not mere coincidence that Juwayni makes the Mongol conquest of Alamut the culmination of his History of the World Conqueror. As a staunch Sunni Muslim, he could scarcely celebrate the devastation of his co-religionists by his own heathen patron whose service he had entered during his youth. He was therefore at pains "to discern some silver linings in the Mongol clouds." (11) What better way than to celebrate his patron's victory over the "arch-heretics," something the Saljuqs had never been able to accomplish? (12) Though he was an eyewitness to the Mongol invasions, Juwayni selectively reports what suits his aim. Numerous authors from the time of d'Ohsson in the early 1880s to David Ayalon more recently have vigorously censured Juwayni for "extravagant flattery" of the Mongols, castigating him for being "servile"--even "nauseating." (13) Edward Granville Browne is somewhat more forgiving, noting that his circumstances "compelled him to speak with civility of the barbarians whom it was his misfortune to serve." (14)

Undoubtedly, the most glaring omission in his tome of the Mongol conquests is his neglecting to mention the fact that the Mongols sacked Baghdad and murdered the last 'Abbasid caliph in 656/1258, unceremoniously rolling him up in a carpet and trampling him to death with elephants. (15) Meanwhile, the downfall of the tiny Nizari Isma'ili state is given great prominence and is the pinnacle of his narrative. (16) Juwayni himself composed the fathnama or proclamation of victory on this occasion. (17) We must wonder, though, if Juwayni's own immense distaste for the sectarians was shared to the same degree by his patron. In fact, Hulagu's own attitude appears ambiguous at times. There are instances when he seems to have treated the Isma'ili Imam with great deference, viewing him with "attention and kindness," and even bestowing lavish gifts on him. (18)

For the same reasons that Juwayni seriously downplays the desolation of the Sunni Muslim world, he revels in the Mongol victories over the Isma'ilis. Asserting that the "sons and daughters, brothers and sisters and all of [the] seed and family" of the last Isma'ili Imam of Alamut, Rukn al-Din Khwarshah were "laid on the fire of annihilation," (19) he triumphantly declares in concluding his history, "He and his followers were kicked to a pulp and then put to the sword; and of him and his stock no trace was left, and he and his kindred became but a tale on men's lips and a tradition in the world." (20) While there can be little doubt that the community was devastated--we know independently from the Tarikh-i Tabaristan, for example, that Khurasan especially was flooded with captive Isma'ili women and children, sold as slaves--this devastation was not total. (21)

Rashid al-Din informs us that the fortress of Girdkuh managed to hold out under extreme siege conditions for almost twenty years, falling only in 669/1270, over a decade after Alamut's capitulation. (22) In the same year, an attempt, ascribed to the Nizaris, was made on the life of 'Ata-Malik Juwayni himself, who had written them out of existence scarcely a decade earlier. This strongly suggests that contemporary witnesses still viewed the Isma'ilis as a force to be reckoned with and were not at all convinced of their extirpation by the Mongols. (23)

Both Hamd Allah Mustawfi (d...