Assassins

♦ The followers of the Old Man of the Mountain, were so-called because they were addicted to the drug "hashish", which kept them in the requisite state of intoxication to perform their atrocious deeds. The modern meaning of the word is derived from their habit of committing violent murders.

(Shaw, M.R.B. Joinville & Villehardouin: Chronicles of the Crusades, 359)

A radical sect of Muslim shi-ites organized in the late 11th century to fight the opponents of Ismali by any means possible. Known to fortify themselves for their work using Hashishin--‘hashish’, they came to be known in French as assassins, and the name became synomynous with plotted murder. The followers had a stronghold near Antioch under the leadership of Sinan Ibn Salman Ibn Muhummad, called Rashid ad-Din, the Old Man of the Mountain. In 1192 they murdered Conrad of Montferrat, supposedly at the behest of Richard Lionheart, but this charge was disproved. See also Chronique: The Journal of Chivalry \#9.