Rating: 
Summary: Informative
Review: A good solid narrative of the history of the Assassins, giving answers to those of us with a curiousity about this mysterious sect. Overall a brief, enjoyable and concise work.
Rating: 
Summary: Poor
Review: An exciting subject matter made into a boring incomplete account.
Bernard Lewis is, no doubt a Scholar of exception ability, but he has missed the boat here. He seems obessesd with only the Islamic sources concerning the Assassins. He has neglected, or choosen to leave out, much of the crusader/Mongol source material.
He trys his best to legitimise the Assassins as a real Islamic sect, rather than an pagan sect operating under the pretence of Islam.
Lewis also attempts to distance the Assassins from the Templars and Crusaders, commenting very little on the endless envoys, pacts, tribute payments,and treaties between them. Nothing on the Assassin envoy that discussed the possibilty of the the Assassins turning christian (that the Templars murdered).
The book was a painfully boring read as well.
Rating:
Summary: The story of the assassins and their effect on modern life.
Review: Bernard Lewis is a prominent Middle East historian whose current works focus on the causes and use of terrorism in this area. This is one of his first books and he details the rise of the assassins in the Shiite area of Syria and Iran. The Assassins practiced political terror, since they were a small sect which held little ground. The use of assassination gave them advantages over their larger rivals, since it instilled fear into the top polical level of their rivals. These rivals wanted to control the Ismaili territories, but could not due to their location and the threat which assassination posed.
Lewis's book is overly scholarly and the readability of this short book is difficult. Many complex Islamic names also hinder the reader's ability to comprehend some of this material. However, the book gives the story of the rise of the assassins and the history of the religion of the Ismailis and the Aga Khan.
This book is beneficial to the history of the Middle East.
Rating:
Summary: The story of the assassins and their effect on modern life.
Review: Bernard Lewis is a prominent Middle East historian whose current works focus on the causes and use of terrorism in this area. This is one of his first books and he details the rise of the assassins in the Shiite area of Syria and Iran. The Assassins practiced political terror, since they were a small sect which held little ground. The use of assassination gave them advantages over their larger rivals, since it instilled fear into the top polical level of their rivals. These rivals wanted to control the Ismaili territories, but could not due to their location and the threat which assassination posed.
Lewis's book is overly scholarly and the readability of this short book is difficult. Many complex Islamic names also hinder the reader's ability to comprehend some of this material. However, the book gives the story of the rise of the assassins and the history of the religion of the Ismailis and the Aga Khan.
This book is beneficial to the history of the Middle East.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent and Timely History
Review: Bernard Lewis remains one of the most respected Middle Eastern historians and is a name more Americans should be familiar with. "The Assassins" was originally published in 1967. This edition has been updated slightly but most of the text is unchanged. The work represents some of the best scholarly efforts of Professor Lewis, especially his work with original historical sources. Some readers may be disappointed with this book however, in that they may be looking for conncections with modern Islamic terrorism. Those connections are elusive. This is a history of sectarian divisions within Islam, particulary certain Ismaili sects of Shi'i Islam. Foremost among those divisions was a sect known generally as the Assassins (do not look for a direct connection between this fascinating religious sect and modern events...there is none). The Assassins began with the sinister Hasn i-Sabbah, and practiced religious and political murder often with the use of certain drugs (hashish for one which may have produced the Persian reference to this group). Oddly enough, most of the targets of the various orders of the Assassins were Sunni Muslims. Christians, such as the Crusaders, were only rarely singled out for their particular arts. As Lewis tells us the Ismailis were generally radical and the Assassins perphaps the most radical sect in Islam. This is a very readible volume, at a very affordable price. Although a scholarly work "The Assassins" is easily accessable to the general reader with an interest in the Middle East. As an undergraduate in college, this writer nearly wore out the single volume in the university library and is very happy to have a new edition in the bookshelf.
Rating:
Summary: Scholarly treatise on the Assassins
Review: Bernard Lewis's The Assassins is a supremely academic introduction to one of the most well-known and most feared sects within historical Islam. The work, originally written in 1967, begins with a detailed explanation of the historical roots of the Assassins, a Nizari Ismaili sect within Shi'a Islam that used targeted killings in the Middle Ages to achieve political, military, and religious goals. Lewis uses a wealth of historical sources to untangle the myths of the Assassins and trace the group's history throughout Medieval Islam. While many people have a general knowledge of or interest in the Assassins, Lewis's book provides in-depth information about the inner workings of this secretive sect. While the title and subject of this book may appeal to the general reader, the book is extremely scholarly. This is both its greatest strength and greatest weakness. Lewis's use of primary source material, much of it previously undiscovered or unused, lends an extraordinary authoritativeness to the book. Lewis is able to fluidly weave this historical source material throughout the book, making it invaluable for historians and regional specialists. However, the book's extensive use of historical sources and quotes limits its accessibility to the general reader. As someone with an academic background in the Middle East and Islam, I still occasionally found myself overwhelmed by the density and scholarliness of Lewis's writing. The book is a must-read for Middle East/Islamic specialists and historians. It is a superb example of succinct, historical, scholarly writing. However, general readers looking for insights into modern day Islamic terrorism and fanaticism will likely find themselves disappointed and overwhelmed by The Assassins.
Rating:
Summary: Scholarly treatise on the Assassins
Review: Bernard Lewis's The Assassins is a supremely academic introduction to one of the most well-known and most feared sects within historical Islam. The work, originally written in 1967, begins with a detailed explanation of the historical roots of the Assassins, a Nizari Ismaili sect within Shi'a Islam that used targeted killings in the Middle Ages to achieve political, military, and religious goals. Lewis uses a wealth of historical sources to untangle the myths of the Assassins and trace the group's history throughout Medieval Islam. While many people have a general knowledge of or interest in the Assassins, Lewis's book provides in-depth information about the inner workings of this secretive sect. While the title and subject of this book may appeal to the general reader, the book is extremely scholarly. This is both its greatest strength and greatest weakness. Lewis's use of primary source material, much of it previously undiscovered or unused, lends an extraordinary authoritativeness to the book. Lewis is able to fluidly weave this historical source material throughout the book, making it invaluable for historians and regional specialists. However, the book's extensive use of historical sources and quotes limits its accessibility to the general reader. As someone with an academic background in the Middle East and Islam, I still occasionally found myself overwhelmed by the density and scholarliness of Lewis's writing. The book is a must-read for Middle East/Islamic specialists and historians. It is a superb example of succinct, historical, scholarly writing. However, general readers looking for insights into modern day Islamic terrorism and fanaticism will likely find themselves disappointed and overwhelmed by The Assassins.
Rating: 
Summary: Scholarly accout of the Assassins
Review: If you are buying this book to find out some of the gory exploits of the Assassins, as I was, you will probably be disappointed. By drawing on many accounts of this enigmatic group, he tries to set the record straight about the origins, developments, and eventual failure of this sect of Islam. If you are like me and have no background in medieval Islamic history, you will be inundated with names and places that are unfamiliar and hard to pronounce. The layman will therefore find the going slow. One will discover that slaughtering one's own religious brethern is far from an excluively Christian phenomenon. If you want an academic analysis of the Ismaili sect of Islam and its offshoot that became the Assassins, this is the book for you. If you are looking for something a little more sensational, you might be disappointed with this book.
Rating:
Summary: The First Islamic Terrorists
Review: It's probably a fair guess that sales of Bernard Lewis's "The Assassins" were a lot slower before 9/11 than they are today. Many who purchased this book over the past year probably did so hoping that it would help provide some insight into Osama bin Laden and the terrorist network he heads. This book doesn't really do that, although that's no reflection on what Lewis has actually accomplished here. He wrote "The Assassins" more than a third of a century ago, and there are very significant differences between the Nizari Ismaili Order and the hate-filled fanatics of Al-Qaeda. But although this book won't help you understand what makes Osama bin Laden and his acolytes tick, it will introduce you to an important and little-known chunk of medieval Islamic history in which a lot of intriguing historical personalities play starring or supporting roles. This should be more than reward enough. The group we call the Assassins are more accurately known as the Nizari Ismailis, an offshoot sect of Shi'i Islam. Their sect still survives today in the followers of the Aga Khan, whose communities from India to southern California reflect a progressive and humane face of Islam. From the late eleventh to thirteenth centuries, however, the Nizaris' struggle for survival in the midst of their more numerous and militarily powerful Sunni enemies led them to develop a form of defensive terrorism that proved remarkably effective in ensuring their security for almost two hundred years. In the end, however, the sect's lurid reputation proved its undoing -- for the Mongol khans ultimately concluded that their own safety could only be secured by the Assassins' extermination. There are some similarities between the Assassins' modus operandi and that of today's Al-Qaeda terrorists. In each case, terrorists assigned to carry out missions for the group did not concern themselves with escape and expected to die whether their mission succeeded or not - a fact that added greatly to the apprehension of their enemies and their own mystique. Each group treated acts of terrorist violence as having a sacramental component - the Assassins always killed their victims up close and personal, choosing to use knives rather than poison or arrows, much as Mohammed Atta and his confederates observed certain rituals of personal hygiene and dress before carrying out their terrorist acts. The young men selected to carry out the actual terrorist operations in each case believed that their sacrifice for the sake of the cause would open the gates of paradise. And each group answered to the commands of s single leader, who styled himself as both a religious teacher and a political and military strategist. But there the similarities end. Indeed, after reading Lewis's account, the most striking thing about the medieval Assassins is how much more civilized they seem to have been than the terrorists of Al-Qaeda. Their use of political assassination as a weapon was both highly focused and thoroughly pragmatic. Because they lacked the military strength to defeat their powerful enemies (primarily the Great Seljuks) in open combat, it made sense instead to strike at their opponents' command structure. Mass slaughter of faraway civilians for its own sake would have been incomprehensible to them. The Nizaris could plausibly have viewed their use of political assassination as both just and humane. They had legitimate grievances, for their community frequently suffered pogroms at the hands of their Sunni enemies that echoed the atrocities inflicted on the Jews of western Europe during this same period. By striking directly at the political, religious or military figures who had attacked their own communities, the Assassins could punish a current enemy, deter Sunni political and religious leaders from future attacks, and win the security they sought without the necessity of killing masses of their enemy's rank-and-file soldiery or risking the lives of more than a handful of their own members. As Lewis points out, the Assassins were also masters of psychological warfare. They sometimes planted "sleeper" agents in the households of prospective enemies just in the event they might ultimately be needed. These agents did not always have to actually strike in order to achieve deterrence - a knife or a note left by an enemy's bedside while he was sleeping served to emphasize his vulnerability and was often sufficient to achieve the Assassins' political ends. (Sometimes, in fact, the Assassins did not even need to plant sleeper agents to accomplish their objectives - they might simply bribe an otherwise loyal member of their enemy's household to leave the note or the knife, thereby accomplishing the same effect without the need of even committing one of their own personnel.) Lewis tackles and persuasively debunks most of the popular legends about the Assassins, such as the claim that their Grand Master secured the fanatical loyalty of his young followers by drugging them with narcotics and then conveying them for short periods to an artificial "paradise" of his own creation that was staffed by sensuous and accommodating young women. Lewis instead finds that a more straightforward (and plausible) explanation for the willingness of the Assassins' fida'is to offer themselves up for suicidal missions: religious passion and commitment to the Nizari community. Lewis's short (140 pages) and elegant account will thus introduce you to an intriguing period of medieval Islamic history, one populated by a collection of memorable figures - the brilliant and ascetic Assassin leader Hassan i-Sabah, the real founder of the Order; the "Old Man of the Mountain," Sinan, who commanded the Order's Syrian branch during the most critical years of the Crusades; Saladin, who was at different times both a target and an ally of the Assassins; Hulegu, the grandson of Genghis Khan, who finally succeeded where the Seljuks had failed, rooting out the Order from its mountaintop fortresses and then ordering mass exterminations of its communicants; and last but not least, Marco Polo, to whose vivid tales can be ascribed much of the lingering fascination that continues to surround the Assassins.
Rating:
Summary: The First Islamic Terrorists
Review: It's probably a fair guess that sales of Bernard Lewis's "The Assassins" were a lot slower before 9/11 than they are today. Many who purchased this book over the past year probably did so hoping that it would help provide some insight into Osama bin Laden and the terrorist network he heads. This book doesn't really do that, although that's no reflection on what Lewis has actually accomplished here. He wrote "The Assassins" more than a third of a century ago, and there are very significant differences between the Nizari Ismaili Order and the hate-filled fanatics of Al-Qaeda. But although this book won't help you understand what makes Osama bin Laden and his acolytes tick, it will introduce you to an important and little-known chunk of medieval Islamic history in which a lot of intriguing historical personalities play starring or supporting roles. This should be more than reward enough. The group we call the Assassins are more accurately known as the Nizari Ismailis, an offshoot sect of Shi'i Islam. Their sect still survives today in the followers of the Aga Khan, whose communities from India to southern California reflect a progressive and humane face of Islam. From the late eleventh to thirteenth centuries, however, the Nizaris' struggle for survival in the midst of their more numerous and militarily powerful Sunni enemies led them to develop a form of defensive terrorism that proved remarkably effective in ensuring their security for almost two hundred years. In the end, however, the sect's lurid reputation proved its undoing -- for the Mongol khans ultimately concluded that their own safety could only be secured by the Assassins' extermination. There are some similarities between the Assassins' modus operandi and that of today's Al-Qaeda terrorists. In each case, terrorists assigned to carry out missions for the group did not concern themselves with escape and expected to die whether their mission succeeded or not - a fact that added greatly to the apprehension of their enemies and their own mystique. Each group treated acts of terrorist violence as having a sacramental component - the Assassins always killed their victims up close and personal, choosing to use knives rather than poison or arrows, much as Mohammed Atta and his confederates observed certain rituals of personal hygiene and dress before carrying out their terrorist acts. The young men selected to carry out the actual terrorist operations in each case believed that their sacrifice for the sake of the cause would open the gates of paradise. And each group answered to the commands of s single leader, who styled himself as both a religious teacher and a political and military strategist. But there the similarities end. Indeed, after reading Lewis's account, the most striking thing about the medieval Assassins is how much more civilized they seem to have been than the terrorists of Al-Qaeda. Their use of political assassination as a weapon was both highly focused and thoroughly pragmatic. Because they lacked the military strength to defeat their powerful enemies (primarily the Great Seljuks) in open combat, it made sense instead to strike at their opponents' command structure. Mass slaughter of faraway civilians for its own sake would have been incomprehensible to them. The Nizaris could plausibly have viewed their use of political assassination as both just and humane. They had legitimate grievances, for their community frequently suffered pogroms at the hands of their Sunni enemies that echoed the atrocities inflicted on the Jews of western Europe during this same period. By striking directly at the political, religious or military figures who had attacked their own communities, the Assassins could punish a current enemy, deter Sunni political and religious leaders from future attacks, and win the security they sought without the necessity of killing masses of their enemy's rank-and-file soldiery or risking the lives of more than a handful of their own members. As Lewis points out, the Assassins were also masters of psychological warfare. They sometimes planted "sleeper" agents in the households of prospective enemies just in the event they might ultimately be needed. These agents did not always have to actually strike in order to achieve deterrence - a knife or a note left by an enemy's bedside while he was sleeping served to emphasize his vulnerability and was often sufficient to achieve the Assassins' political ends. (Sometimes, in fact, the Assassins did not even need to plant sleeper agents to accomplish their objectives - they might simply bribe an otherwise loyal member of their enemy's household to leave the note or the knife, thereby accomplishing the same effect without the need of even committing one of their own personnel.) Lewis tackles and persuasively debunks most of the popular legends about the Assassins, such as the claim that their Grand Master secured the fanatical loyalty of his young followers by drugging them with narcotics and then conveying them for short periods to an artificial "paradise" of his own creation that was staffed by sensuous and accommodating young women. Lewis instead finds that a more straightforward (and plausible) explanation for the willingness of the Assassins' fida'is to offer themselves up for suicidal missions: religious passion and commitment to the Nizari community. Lewis's short (140 pages) and elegant account will thus introduce you to an intriguing period of medieval Islamic history, one populated by a collection of memorable figures - the brilliant and ascetic Assassin leader Hassan i-Sabah, the real founder of the Order; the "Old Man of the Mountain," Sinan, who commanded the Order's Syrian branch during the most critical years of the Crusades; Saladin, who was at different times both a target and an ally of the Assassins; Hulegu, the grandson of Genghis Khan, who finally succeeded where the Seljuks had failed, rooting out the Order from its mountaintop fortresses and then ordering mass exterminations of its communicants; and last but not least, Marco Polo, to whose vivid tales can be ascribed much of the lingering fascination that continues to surround the Assassins.
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