Samarkand pdfdrive com

qadi
of her
city and an old servant of her dynasty, she will have to receive you.’
The 
qadi
had only to nod his head for Nizam to continue:
‘Once in the tentwork room, you will tell her about the misery Samarkand is
in because of the heretics, but you will omit to mention Ahmed’s conversion. On
the contrary, you will make sure to tell her that Hassan Sabbah covets her throne,
that her life is in danger and that only providence can still save her. You will add
that you have been to see me but that I was hardly inclined to listen to you, nay I
even dissuaded you from speaking about it to the Sultan.’
The next day the plan worked without the slightest hitch. While Terken
Khatun took it upon herself to convince the Sultan of the need to save the Khan
of Samarkand, Nizam al-Mulk, who was pretending to be against this, threw
himself into making preparations for the expedition. By this make-believe war
Nizam was not just trying to annexe Transoxania, and even less was he trying to
save Samarkand, but above all to re-establish his prestige which had been
slighted by Ismaili subversion. For that, he needed a clear and stunning victory.
For years his spies had been swearing to him, every day, that Hassan had been
pinned down, and that he was on the point of being apprehended, but the rebel

---

was not up for capture and his troops vanished at the first contact. Nizam was
thus seeking a chance to confront him face to face, army to army. Samarkand
was just the perfect place.
In the spring of 1089 an army of two hundred thousand men was on the
march, with elephants and instruments of siege. The intrigues and lies which
instigated its march are insignificant for it was to accomplish what every army
must. It began by taking possession of Bukhara without the least resistance and
then it headed on towards Samarkand. Arriving at the gates of the city,
Malikshah announced to Ahmed Khan in a pitiful message that he had come at
last to deliver him from the yoke of the heretics. ‘I have asked nothing of my
august brother,’ the Khan replied coldly. Malikshah was astonished whereas
Nizam was not at all disturbed. ‘The Khan is no longer a free agent. We must act
as if he did not exist.’ In any case, the army could not retrace its steps. The emirs
wanted their share of the booty and would not return empty-handed.
In the first days, the treachery of a tower guard permitted the assailants to
sweep into the city. They took up position to the west, near the Monastery Gate.
The defenders fell back to the souks in the south, around the Kish Gate.
According to their faith, one section of the population decided to provide for the
Sultan’s troops, feeding them and giving them encouragement and another
section embraced the cause of Ahmed Khan. Fighting raged for two weeks, but
there was never a second’s doubt of the outcome. The Khan, who had taken
refuge with a friend in the district of the domes, was quickly taken prisoner
along with all the Ismaili chiefs. Only Hassan managed to escape through a
subterranean canal at night.
Nizam had won, it is true, but by dint of playing the Sultan off against the
Sultana he had poisoned irreparably his relations with the court. Even if
Malikshah did not regret having conquered the most prestigious cities of
Transoxania so easily, his self-respect suffered at having allowed himself to be
abused. He went so far as to refuse to organize the traditional victory banquet for
his troops. ‘It’s out of avarice,’ Nizam whispered spitefully to all and sundry.
As for Hassan Sabbah, he learnt a valuable lesson from his defeat. Rather
than try and convert princes, he would forge a fearsome instrument of war which
would bear no resemblance to anything which mankind had known until then:
the order of the Assassins.

---