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In recent decades new scholarship on the history of the Ismailis has established the extent to which older Western accounts have confused fact and fantasy. In view of the very different picture of Ismaili history that has now emerged, Farhad Daftary’s book considers the origins of the mediaeval Assassin legends and explores the historical context in which they were fabricated and transmitted. How did they persist for so long, and in what form did they come to exert such a profound influence on European scholarship? Daftary’s fascinating account ultimately reveals the extent to which the emergence of such legends was symptomatic of both the complex political and cultural structures of the mediaeval Muslim world and of Europeans’ ignorance of that world. The book will be of great interest to all those concerned with Ismaili studies, the history of Islam and the Middle East, as well as the mediaeval history of Europe. Also included as an appendix is the first English translation of the French orientalist Silvestre de Sacy’s famous early 19th century “Memoir on the Assassins and the Etymology of their Name”.

Note on Transliteration and Abbreviations

Preface

1. Introduction

2. The Isma‘ilis in History and in Mediaeval Muslim Writings

3. Mediaeval European Perceptions of Islam and the Isma‘ilis

4. Origins and Early Formation of the Legends

Appendix: Silvestre de Sacy’s Memoir on the ‘Assassins’

Introductory Note, by Farhad Daftary

Memoir on the Dynasty of the Assassins, and on the Etymology of their Name by Antoine I. Silvestre de Sacy, translated by Azizeh Azodi, edited by Farhad Daftary

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