Q2129Marco Polo described a hidden garden where recruits woke believing they were in paradise — a tale already circulating in Europe, about a fortress that had fallen before he travelled.
The details are wonderful and that is the problem: gilded pavilions, a sleeping draught, young men waking in an engineered heaven. But the title 'Old Man of the Mountain' was invented by Crusaders for the Syrian Ismaili leader and never used in Iran, Alamut had been destroyed before Polo passed through, and the story was current in Europe before he wrote it down. He was repeating what Europeans already believed. The most famous fact about the Assassins is really a fact about their audience.