Alamut

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Alamut Castle was a fortress located in Persia which served as a stronghold for the Hidden Ones and later the capital of the Levantine Brotherhood of Assassins when it became a public state.

The fortress was the parent of several other castles established throughout the mountains of Persia and Syria, most notably Masyaf. It remained in operation until its destruction in 1256 by the Mongol Empire in retaliation for the assassination of Genghis Khan by Darim Ibn-La'Ahad and Qulan Gal, after which the fortress was abandoned.

Alamut was, unbeknownst to later Assassins, built atop a small Isu temple, which contained dozens of Memory Seals.

History

Isu Era

During the Isu Era, the region where Alamut Castle would eventually be built served as the site of a prison where rogue Isu were contained and tortured. This prison would later become a storage facility for dozens of Memory Seals, and eventually be abandoned after the Great Catastrophe. Over the millennia, the Alamut temple was reduced to little more than a series of underground ruins, with debris and natural rock formations covering most of its entrances.

Middle Ages

Hidden One fortress

At some point before or during the 9th century, the Hidden Ones discovered the ruins of the Alamut temple. Seeking to protect the site from the Order of the Ancients, they decided to establish a permanent base of operation in the region, and began construction of a fortress above the ruins, which would eventually become Alamut Castle. The Hidden Ones also maintained a fragile alliance with the Abbasid Caliphate military, who protected the grounds the fortress was being built on.

During the 860s, as construction of Alamut Castle was nearing its final stages, the local Hidden Ones operated out of a camp in the surrounding mountains. It was here that the Master Assassin Roshan brought a new initiate to the brotherhood, Basim Ibn Ishaq, in order to train him in the Hidden Ones' ways.

Two months into his training, Basim and the fellow Hidden One Nur spotted a group of mercenaries while on guard duty and dispatched them. Deducing that the mercenaries had been sent by the Order to find the location of the Hidden One camp and the Alamut temple, the Mentor Rayhan sent Nur to Baghdad to investigate. When Nur later returned wounded, Rayhan assigned Basim, Roshan and Fuladh to continue his investigation.

After being informed by Qabiha, the leader of the Order, that the Alamut temple held the answers to his questions, Basim returned to Alamut to investigate, arriving in the midst of an attack by the Caliphate's forces, after governor Muhammad ibn Tahir had made a deal with the Order to end his protection of the region. Basim was rescued by a mortally wounded Nur, and went on to free many of his captured Hidden One brothers and sisters. While the Hidden Ones fought off the attack, Basim ventured into the Isu temple alone following a confrontation with Roshan, where he ultimately discovered and embraced his nature as the reincarnation of the Isu Loki.

In 879, Fuladh, following his promotion to Mentor of the Hidden Ones in the Justanid region, was set to host a council within the newly constructed fortress of Alamut. Fuladh invited Hytham, Basim's former apprentice who had started a new Hidden One chapter in England, to attend the council, in order to give a full account of Basim's betrayal.

Assassin stronghold

Under the leadership of Hassan-i Sabbāh, Alamut became the principal base of the Levantine Brotherhood when he transformed the order into a public state for the first time, during the late 11th century.

During the tenure of Hassan the Younger, an Assassin later popularly known as Al Mualim departed from the castle to establish the fortress at Masyaf in the An-Nusayriyah Mountains, ostensibly to spread Assassin influence to the Levant. Despite rumors that this was the result of a schism between Hassan and his subordinate, the two continued to co-exist as major strongholds for the Levantine Brotherhood throughout the medieval period.

By 1227, Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad, his son Darim, the wife of his late son Sef, and his grandchildren sought refuge in Alamut after Abbas Sofian staged a coup to take over the Assassin Order in Masyaf. Altaïr remained in exile in the fortress for almost two decades, during which time he made several discoveries, in addition to creating a number of inventions through the knowledge he gained from the Apple of Eden. Altaïr also discovered the ruins of the Isu temple underneath Alamut, and took six of the Memory Seals he found there with him, later using five of them as the keys to his library underneath Masyaf Castle.

In 1256, Assassin control of the fortress was lost to the invading Mongol Empire, and its famous library was destroyed by fire on the order of Ata-Malik Juvayni, a servant of the Mongol court.

In the early 18th century, the ruins of Alamut Castle were visited by Edward Kenway, a British Assassin, as part of his search for Isu sites.

Trivia

• "Alamut" is a Persian word meaning "Eagle's Nest". It is also the name of the novel that partly inspired the first iteration of the Assassin's Creed franchise.
• Historically, it was Alamut - and not Masyaf - the last Assassin stronghold to fall to the Mongols, after the Assassins' Grand Master, Rukn al-Din Khurshah, was executed by the Mongols at 1256. In the series' lore, Masyaf falls in 1257, after Alamut.
• Although Alamut is in Persia, not the Levant, and Al Mualim's split from Hassan the Younger suggests that Alamut and Masyaf may have hosted separate branches, Assassin's Creed: The Essential Guide names Hassan-i Sabbah as a Levantine Assassin. This indicates that, at least officially if not in practice, Alamut and Masyaf belonged to the one and same branch, the Levantine Brotherhood.

Appearances

• Assassin's Creed: The Secret Crusade (first appearance)
• Assassin's Creed: Rogue (mentioned only)
• Assassin's Creed: Valhalla (mentioned only)
  • Shared History (mentioned only)
• Assassin's Creed: Mirage