CHAPTER IV
The Assassins
Three students in Neishapur, swearing eternal friendship to each other, entered one day into a fantastic agreement by which they were to circumvent Fortune. Whoever succeeded first, pledged himself to lend a helping hand to the others. The one was destined to power; the other to fame; and the third, to the universal malediction of mankind. Nizam ul-Mulk, who
afterwards became vezier to the Sultan Malek Shah; Omar Khayyam, who refused the proffered favors of his former college friend, preferring the Book of Verse and the Jug of Wine; and Hasan ibn Sabah, who was later known and feared as the Old Man of the Mountain, the founder of the Sect of Assassins, were the three young covenanters of Neishapur.
In his early days Hasan nursed the dream of power; and this agreement, which
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