| rdfs:comment | - The Levantine Brotherhood of Assassins, also known as Hashashin, was the Guild of Assassins located along the Levant, and the leading branch of the Order during the Crusades. Under the leadership of Hassan-i Sabbāh, the Levantine Assassins founded its own sovereign state in 1050, resulting in the first time in history that the Assassins entered into public consciousness. Accordingly, the Levantine Brotherhood was far more of a public organization than the other Assassin branches. Not long afterwards, their sworn enemies followed suit by rechristening themselves as the Knights Templar and masquerading as a military order for the defense of Christian pilgrims.
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| abstract | - The Levantine Brotherhood of Assassins, also known as Hashashin, was the Guild of Assassins located along the Levant, and the leading branch of the Order during the Crusades. Under the leadership of Hassan-i Sabbāh, the Levantine Assassins founded its own sovereign state in 1050, resulting in the first time in history that the Assassins entered into public consciousness. Accordingly, the Levantine Brotherhood was far more of a public organization than the other Assassin branches. Not long afterwards, their sworn enemies followed suit by rechristening themselves as the Knights Templar and masquerading as a military order for the defense of Christian pilgrims. During the tenure of Hassan the Younger, the Levantine Brotherhood expanded from northern Persia into the Levant when a force under the Assassin later known as Al Mualim was sent out to establish castles in the An-Nusayriyah Mountains, most notably Masyaf. From then on, Masyaf would serve as one of the principal bases of the Levantine Assassins, more or less autonomous from Alamut. Their feared presence in the region attracted multiple invasions by the Saracens and Crusaders which all proved futile, and the state played a pivotal role in the Third Crusade, exerting much political influence through its assassination of key figures. In that conflict, Al Mualim betrayed the Order by colluding with the Templars to seize the Apple of Eden, having come to agree that a New World Order was the only solution for global peace. With the Apple in hand, he then turned on his Templar allies by having his best agent, Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad, eliminate them one after another, but would ultimately be slain by Altaïr when he exposed his treachery. The torch thereafter passed to Altaïr, under whose leadership, the Assassin Order was reformed, with new techniques created and archaic and authoritarian rules and customs undone. Using knowledge gained from an Apple of Eden, the Levantine Brotherhood were eventually spread to different locations around the globe—an effort to make the Assassin Order a more global organization—with the Levantine Assassins becoming the forebearer to many other Assassin branches in the process.
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