Hasan-i Sabbah

Hasan-i Sabbah (in full, Hasan ibn Ali al-Sabbah) was a Persian Ismaili missionary and political organizer best known for founding the Nizari Ismaili state centered on the mountain fortress of Alamut. He was born, according to the modern scholarly consensus, in Qom in the mid-1050s into a Twelver (Ithna'ashari) Shia family; his father is reported to have been of Kufan-Arab, possibly Yemeni, descent. The family settled in Rayy, a long-standing center of Ismaili activity, where Hasan received his early religious education and, around the age of seventeen, was drawn to Ismaili teaching by a local da'i (missionary) and gave his oath of allegiance to the Fatimid caliph-imam al-Mustansir in Cairo.

Sent for further training, Hasan reached Egypt in 1078, spending about three years in Cairo and Alexandria before friction with the powerful vizier Badr al-Jamali led to his expulsion. Returning to Persia by 1081, he worked the da'wa (mission) across the northern mountains and in 1090 took control of Alamut. When al-Mustansir died in 1094 and the Cairo court bypassed his son Nizar, Hasan recognized Nizar as the rightful imam — the origin of the Nizari branch. Which succession was legitimate remains a matter held differently by Nizari and Musta'li Ismailis; this site does not adjudicate it. Later tradition holds Hasan never left Alamut for the rest of his life. He died there in 1124. The popular "Assassins" legends attached to his name are largely the work of hostile and later writers.