Ensconced within his citadel at Alamut, in northern Iran, Hassan Ibn Saba, known as the "old man of the mountain", is the leader of a fanatical Islamic sect that wages a terrifying holy war against the Muslims living under Turkish rule. Set in the year 1092, this sweeping historical fiction carries us back in time to medieval Baghdad, and to the Seijouk Empire stretching from the outer limits of India to the cities and villages bordering the Mediterranean Sea.
Hassan has no army, no land, and little support from the courts at Baghdad. Yet somehow, in less than a year’s time, he manages to attack this empire and eventually shatter it to pieces. How does he do it? Opening the door of his harem to his faithful fedayins (soldiers of Allah), he intoxicates them with wine and hashish, giving them a taste of the paradise promised to brave martyrs. Usurping the world’s great religions and philosophies for his own gain, Hasan taps into his followers’ spiritual yearnings and delusions, manipulating them in order to carry out a plan of mass destruction. Shortly thereafter, he sends them off, drunk with ideology, to assassinate and massacre for the greater glory of their master.
An oriental tapestry, rich with detail of the lives and rites of a lost world, Alamut is ultimately a reflection on all forms of despotism. In a magnificent prose reminiscent of Flaubert’s Salambo, Vladimir Bartol unveils the secret inner workings of Islamic terrorism. This novel also helps us understand how the violence in the Middle East of a century ago prefigured that of our own time.
Originally published in 1938, this visionary tale is considered to be one of the great masterpieces of Slovenian literature. Lost among countless works during the post-Stalinist period, it is now available for the first time, via the French, for an English-language translation.