Speaking of Isma‘ilism, I just wanted to throw in my theory about the Assassins. It’s conventional wisdom that they were named for hashish (linguistic note: hashîsh is simply the Arabic word for ‘grass’. Calling Cannabis sativa “grass” is not just modern slang. The Arabs were way ahead of us on this).
There have been ridiculous stories concocted about the hitmen of the Assassins being doped with hashish to delude their minds into committing those foul political murders. Back in the days of Reefer Madness, when Harry Anslinger was spreading racist propaganda that marijuana would turn white kids into murdering maniacs, like those degenerate “Negroes” and Mexicans who used “marihuana,” people who knew nothing about its effects let their imaginations run riot and thought the Isma‘ili Assassins carried out their murders under the influence of hashish. Preposterous. Pot and hash mellow you out, as anybody with a bit of common sense knows.
So the theory was modified to guess that Hasan-i Sabbâh, the Shaykh al-Jabal (Old Man of the Mountain), used hashish to persuade his young men that they had been temporarily admitted to Paradise, and the only way to get back there was to follow his nefarious instructions. This version is more nuanced and clever, but still wrong.
In the Middle East, hashshâshî is a derogatory word often used in jest to call a person foolish or delusional. Like modern Ebonic slang would say “You trippin’, man.” When a religious sect radically deviates from the norm of society, you can be sure that the majority people will cast disrepute on it with any derogatory label they can get to stick. Often, secretive heretical sects are accused of sexual perversion or debauchery. In the case of the Nizaris, they were dismissed as “hashshâshîyîn” as a slang term of disrespect. This does not mean that hashish actually formed part of their religion or their undercover blackops tactics.
The real source of the word Assassin: The Nizari Isma‘ili order was hierarchically structured. A new initiate would rise through the ranks as he rendered more service to the order, learned its doctrines, and proved himself worthy. Since the Seveners structured everything according to the number seven, there were seven grades or degrees of the Nizari order. The top level of the hierarchy was named assâs, which means ‘builder of the foundation’. The high-ranking elite of the order were the foundation, the basis for the whole structure. The assâsîn were the elite of the Nizaris. The non-Isma‘ilis mocked them by making a derogatory pun on the word assâsîn and calling them hashshâshîn instead.
It was the French Orientalist Sylvestre de Sacy in the late 18th century who seriously suggested that the Nizaris used hashish to turn themselves into ravening murderers. He did not have a good understanding of them. The Nizaris at the time of Hasan-i Sabbâh were a serious, dedicated secret society-cum-fighting force. They did not play around with silly shit like hashish. They were disciplined and highly trained. (Later, after the death of Hasan-i Sabbâh, his son and successor Hasan II broke the fast of Ramadan at high noon by drinking wine, and proclaimed the Qiyâmah, the “Great Resurrection,” in which the former rules of Islam were abrogated, and the whole thing took a radically different turn. But Hasan-i Sabbâh himself was not a druggie.)