There he maintained himself against all the power of the Sultan, until at length the daggers of his Fedavie, or devoted followers, freed him from his most active enemies, and appalled the others into quiescence. Alamūt was now called "the abode of Fortune," and all the neighbouring strongholds submitted to the Ancient of the Mountain. The Assassins were proscribed in all civilised communities, and the dagger and the sword found constant work on their own professors. The Assassins, however, like the Indian Thugs, depraved all societies, in all sorts of disguises. At one time the courtiers of a Caliph being solemnly invoked, with a promise of pardon and impunity, five chamberlains stepped forward, and each showed the dagger, which only waited an order from the Old Man to plunge into the heart of any human being it could reach. By such agency Hassan kept entire empires in a state of revolution and carnage. From his remote fortress he made his influence felt and feared to the extreme confines of Khorassan and Syria. And thence, too, he propagated the still more infernal engines of his authority, his catechisms of atheism and licentiousness--"Nothing is true; all things are permitted to the initiated." Such was the foundation of his creed. [17] The mystery relating to this community is so great that the laborious Müller, in his twenty-four books, has not attempted to penetrate it. And Gibbon, notwithstanding his acknowledged pleasure in painting scenes of blood, has treated the Order of Assassins very superficially. Marco Polo is, as usual, the most entertaining of authorities, as far as he goes; but it remained for Joseph Von Hammer to explore the faint vestiges of their strange story with vast and patient research. He has thrown together the results of his labours in a small volume, of great interest. [18] The Vulture's Nest. [19] Dais, Refik, and Fedavie.