Samarkand pdfdrive com

CHAPTER 19
In the Seljuk empire, at a time when it was the most powerful empire in the
world, a woman dared to take power with her bare hands. Seated behind her
tenting, she arrayed armies from one end of Asia to the other, named kings and
vizirs, governors and 
qadis
, dictated letters to the Caliph and sent emissaries off
to the master of Alamut. To emirs who grumbled upon hearing her give orders to
the troops, she responded: ‘Here it is the men who make war, but it is the women
who tell them against whom to fight.’
In the Sultan’s harem, she was nicknamed ‘the Chinese woman’. She had
been born in Samarkand, to a family originally from Kashgar, and, like her elder
brother Nasr Khan, her face showed no intermingling of blood – neither the
Semitic features of the Arabs, nor the Aryan features of the Persians.
She was Malikshah’s oldest wife by far. When she married him he was only
nine years old and she was eleven. She waited patiently for him to mature. She
had felt the first down of his beard, surprised the first spring of desire in his body
and seen his limbs grow out, and his muscles swell up as he turned into the
majestic windbag whom she soon learnt to tame. She had never ceased being the
favourite wife – adulated, wooed, honoured and above all listened to and
obeyed. At the end of a day, or upon his return from a lion hunt, a tournament, a
bloody clash, a stormy assembly of the emirs or worse – a tedious work session
with Nizam, Malikshah would find peace in the arms of Terken. He would peel
off her diaphanous silk covering, snuggle up to her bare skin, play about, bellow
and tell her about his exploits and what was tiring him. The Chinese woman

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would throw her arms around the excited lion, cocoon him, give him a hero’s
welcome in the folds of her body and hold on to him long and tight, only letting
go so that she could pull him back again; he stretched himself out with all his
weight, conquering, breathless, panting, submissive and bewitched. She knew
how to take him to the very limits of pleasure.
Then, gently his thin fingers would start to trace her eyebrows, her eyelashes,
her lips, her earlobes and the lines of her moist neck; the lion was subdued, he
was purring, growing sluggish, smiling. Terken’s words would then flow into the
hollows of his soul. She would speak of him, of herself and their children. She
would tell him anecdotes, recite poems for him, whisper parables laden with
teachings. He was never bored for a second in her arms and he resolved to stay
with her every evening. In his own rough, childish and animal way he loved her
and was to love her until his last breath. She knew that he could refuse her
nothing and it was she who planned his conquests of the moment, his mistresses
or provinces. In the whole empire she had no rival other than Nizam, and in this
year of 1092 she was on the verge of felling him.
Was the Chinese woman exultant at this? How could she be? The moment
she was alone, or with Jahan her confidante, he would cry the tears of a mother
and Sultana. She could curse her unjust fate and no one thought to blame her for
it. Her eldest son had been chosen by Malikshah as his heir and was with him on
all his trips and at all his ceremonies. His father was so proud of him that he
displayed him everywhere, showing him his provinces one by one, telling him of
the day when he would succeed him. ‘No Sultan ever left such a large empire to
his son!’ he would tell him. At that time Terken was indeed overjoyed and no
unhappiness soured her smile.
Then the heir died from a sudden, shattering and merciless fever. In vain the
doctors prescribed bleedings and poultices but within two nights he passed away.
It was said to be the work of the evil eye or even an undetectable poison. Terken
managed to control her tears and pull herself together. When the period of
mourning was over, she had her second son designated as heir to the throne.
Malikshah took to him very quickly and showered him with surprising titles for
a nine-year-old, but it was an era of pomp and ceremony: ‘King of kings, Pillar
of the State, Protector of the Prince of the Believers’ …
The curse of the evil eye did not tarry in doing away with the new heir. He
died as suddenly as his brother of a fever which was just as suspect.
The Chinese woman had a last son whom she asked the Sultan to designate as
heir. The affair was trickier this time, since the child was only a year-and-a-half

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old and Malikshah was the father of three other boys who were all older. Two of
them were born to a slave girl, but the eldest, named Barkiyaruk, was the son of
the Sultan’s own cousin. What pretext could he use to brush them aside? Who
better than this prince, who was doubly Seljuk, to be elevated to the rank of heir
to the throne? Such was the view of Nizam, who wanted to interject some order
into the Turkish squabbles, who had always been eager to institute some form of
hereditary dynasty and who had insisted, with the best arguments in the world,
that Malikshah’s eldest son should be designated heir, but with no success.
Malikshah dared not go against Terken, and as he could not nominate his son
by her, he nominated no one preferring to risk dying without an heir, like his
father and all his clan.
Terken was not satisfied and would not be until her lineage was duly assured
– that is to say that more than anything in the world she desired to see Nizam,
the obstacle to her ambitions, fall into disgrace. In order to obtain his death
warrant, she was ready to use intrigue or issue threats, and day after day she
followed the negotiations with the Assassins. She had accompanied the Sultan
and his vizir on their journey to Baghdad. She was keen to be there for the
execution.
It was Nizam’s last meal. The supper was an 
iftar
, the banquet which marks
the break of the fast of the tenth day of Ramadan. Dignitaries, courtiers and
emirs of the army were all unusually abstemious out of respect for the holy
month. The table was laid inside a huge yurt. Slaves carried torches to enable
people to choose their food. Sixty ravenous hands stretched toward the huge
silver platters, the best piece of camel or lamb and the choicest legs of partridge,
skimming off flesh and sauce. They divided the food, ripped it apart and
devoured it. If someone found himself in possession of a particularly toothsome
item, he would offer it to a neighbour he wished to honour.
Nizam was eating little. That evening he was suffering more than usual. His
chest was on fire and his insides felt as if they were being churned by the hand
of an invisible giant. He was making an effort to hold himself upright.
Malikshah was at his side, munching everything his neighbours passed to him.
From time to time he was seen to look at his vizir out of the corner of his eye,
thinking that he must be afraid. Suddenly he stretched his hand toward a plate of
black figs, selected the plumpest and offered it to Nizam who accepted it politely
and bit into it. What savour could figs have when one was three times
condemned, by God, the Sultan and the Assassins?
By the time the 
iftar
was over, it was already night. Malikshah jumped up, in

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a hurry to go and join his Chinese woman and tell her about the vizir’s grimaces.
Nizam leant on his elbows and hoisted himself up with some effort. His harem’s
tents were not far off and his old female cousin would have prepared a
concoction of myrobalan to provide him some ease. He only had to take a
hundred steps to be there. Around him was the inevitable confusion of royal
camps with its soldiers, servants and wandering tradesmen. Now and then he
could hear the stifled laugh of a courtesan. How long the path seemed, and he
was dragging himself along it alone. Usually he was surrounded by a group of
courtiers, but who now wished to be seen with an outlaw? Even the beggars had
fled – what could they hope to obtain from a disgraced old man?
However someone was approaching him, a decent-looking man clothed in a
patched coat. He muttered some pious words and Nizam felt for his purse and
retrieved three pieces of gold. This unknown man who would still approach him
ought to be rewarded.
There was a flash, the flash of a sword and everything happened very
quickly. Hardly had Nizam seen the hand move before the dagger pierced his
clothing and skin and the point worked its way between his ribs. He had not even
shouted out, but just made a dazed movement and gasped a last breath. As he
was dying, he may have seen again, in slow motion, the blade, the arm stretching
out and withdrawing and the nervous mouth which spat out: This present comes
to you from Alamut!’
Then cries went up. The Assassin had run off but had been tracked from tent
to tent and found. Hurriedly they slit his throat and dragged him barefoot to be
thrown on to a fire.
In the years and decades to come, innumerable messengers from Alamut
would meet the same death, the only difference being that they would not
attempt to flee. ‘It is not enough to kill our enemies,’ Hassan taught them. ‘We
are not murderers but executioners. We must act in public as an example. By
killing one man we terrorize a hundred thousand. However, it is not enough to
execute and terrorize, we must also know how to die, for if, by killing, we
discourage our enemies from undertaking any action against us, by dying in the
most courageous fashion, we force the masses to admire us, and from their midst
men will come to join us. Dying is more important than killing. We kill to
defend ourselves, but we die to convert, and to conquer. Conquering is the aim
we are seeking; defending ourselves is only a means thereto.’
Assassinations generally took place on Friday in the mosque, at the moment

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of solemn prayer and in front of the assembled people. The victim, be he vizir,
prince or religious dignitary, would arrive surrounded by an imposing guard.
The crowd would be impressed, submissive and admiring. The emissary from
Alamut would be there somewhere in the most unexpected of disguises – as a
member of the guard, for example. At the moment when everyone’s gaze was on
the victim, he would strike. The victim would die and the executioner would not
move, but would yell out a formula he had learnt and with a smile of defiance
would wait to be set upon by the furious guards and then ripped limb from limb
by the frightened crowd. The message had been delivered; the successor to the
person who had been assassinated would make himself more conciliatory toward
Alamut, and there would be a score, or two score conversions amongst those
present.
So unreal were these scenes that it was often said that Hassan’s men were
drugged. How otherwise could it be explained that they went to their deaths with
a smile? Some credence was given to the assertion that they were acting under
the influence of hashish and it was Marco Polo who popularized this idea in the
West. Their enemies in the Muslim world would contemptuously call them