Political assassinations in the Islamic Middle Ages - the Ismaili state in Iran as a model ( Historical Study )

Abstract

When we read Islamic history, we see that the hand of assassinations affected most of the caliphs of Islam and the leaders of the Islamic army, but worse than that, those who carry out most of the assassinations are the sons of the same religion or tribe. This reflects the unstable political situation in Islamic political history, in fact the makers of death have taken frightening forms of assassination such as ignoring the person or luring him or to lie for him and kill him deliberately by surprise, the liquidation may be to remove a danger, whether the declaration of hostility is public or secret. It is worth mentioning that the resort to assassination was a prominent feature in the pages of the history of Islamic rule during the Middle Ages, used by the ruling authority and its opponents with their justifications, whether political, religious and others. The history of assassinations in Islam began with the establishment of the Islamic state during the era of the Prophet, may God bless him and grant him peace, and will continue in the successive Umayyad, Abbasid and Fatimid states, as for the most dangerous assassinations and political liquidations that prevailed during the era of the Ismaili state in Iran. It is worth mentioning that most of the assassinations were for political purposes carried out under a religious cover applied outside the legal provisions and then turned into a semi-habit for the ruling Islamic regimes. The Ismailis constituted the second largest Shiite Muslim sect after the Twelver Imamiyya sect, and today they are distributed as religious minorities in more than twenty-five countries of Asia (especially India, where they are called Bohras), Africa, Europe and North America