from the Assassins pinned by a dagger to the ground beside his couch, or a doctor of the law would find a similar message between the pages of the text book from which he was lecturing. All this was developed more elaborately as time went on, but already in the days of Mustali the sect had rendered itself prominent by getting rid of some leading men whom it regarded as its enemies, such as in 485 Nidhamu l-Mulk the great wazir of the Saljuq sultans, in 491 ʿAbdu r-Rahman as-Samayrami the wazir of Barkiyaruq’s mother, and in 494 Unru Bulka, the rival of Nidhamu l-Mulk and the emir of greater influence in Isfahan. The higher members of the sect were domiciled at Alamut, or in some one or other of the various mountain fortresses they secured in Northern Persia and afterwards in Syria, but adherents were found everywhere scattered through western Asia. In its development the sect of Assassins was almost entirely Asiatic, but as professed adherents of Nizar the eldest son of Mustansir, the Assassins were, at least nominally, of Egyptian origin. So far the danger most threatening to the Fatimids had been the advance of the Saljuq Turks, pledged to the destruction of the Ismaʿilian heresy, from the east: but in the fourth year of Mustali’s reign a new danger appeared. This was the appearance of the Franks embarked on the First Crusade, who reached Syria in the year 490, when the Saljuq influence was already on the decline. The great Saljuq leader Tutush had died in the preceding year, and his two sons at once became rivals, the one, Duqaq, established at Damascus, the other, Rudwan, at Aleppo. Rudwan was anxious to obtain Fatimid assistance and inserted Mustali’s name in the _khutba_, but the Fatimid state regarded the Saljuqs with dread and suspicion, and was disposed to welcome the Franks as possible allies against the Turks. Jerusalem remained in Saljuq hands under the control of the sons of Ortuk b. Aksab who had governed in the name of Tutush, and they formed an outpost of the Saljuq empire which the Fatimid government regarded as its chief enemy in the east.