Case file · Folklore / legend
The garden of the Old Man of the Mountain
Marco Polo, passing through Persia about 1272, told how the 'Old Man of the Mountain' at Alamut drugged young men and showed them a secret paradise garden so they would die for him as assassins.
1272 CE · 36.45, 50.59 · status: legend
The account
The Nizari Ismaili state ruled from Alamut castle from 1090 until the Mongols took it in 1256. The legend gave Europe the word 'assassin', from 'hashishin'.
The sceptical view
Historians such as Farhad Daftary regard the drug and garden stories as hostile myths; Nizari sources say nothing of them.