Hassan Sabah clearly perceived that the plan of the society at Cairo was defective as a mean of acquiring temporal power. The Dais might exert themselves, and proselytes might be gained; but till possession was obtained of some strongholds, and a mode of striking terror into princes devised, nothing effectual could be achieved. He first, therefore, as we have seen, made himself master of Alamoot and the other strong places, and then added to the Dais and the Refeek another class, named Fedavee (_Devoted_), whose task it was to yield implicit obedience to the mandate of their chief, and, without inquiry or hesitation, plunge their daggers into the bosom of whatever victim was pointed out to them, even though their own lives should be the immediate sacrifice. The ordinary dress of the Fedavee was (like that of all the sects opposed to the house of Abbas) white; their caps, girdles, or boots, were red. Hence they were named the White (_Mubeiyazah_), and the Red (_Muhammeré_[30]); but they could with ease assume any guise, even that of the Christian monk, to accomplish their murderous designs. [Footnote 30: Ahmar, fem. Hamra, is _red_ in Arabic; hence the celebrated Moorish palace at Granada was called Alhambra (_Al-Hamra_), _i. e._ the Red.] The gradations in the society were these. At the head of it stood Hassan himself and his successors, with the title of Seydna, or Sidna[31] (_Our Lord_), and Sheikh-al-Jebal (_Mountain Chief_), a name derived from that of the territory which was the chief seat of the power of the society. This last, owing to the ambiguity of the word _sheikh_ (which, like _seigneur_ and _signore_, signifies either an _elder_ or _chief_), has been ridiculously translated by the early European historians _Old Man of the Mountain_. Under him were the Dai-'l-Kebir (_Great Missionaries_), of which there were three, for the three provinces of Jebal, Kuhistan, and Syria[32]. Then came the Dais, next the Refeek, then the Fedavee, and lastly the Lazik, or aspirants. [Footnote 31: Hence the Spanish _Cid_.] [Footnote 32: Hammer, book ii.] Hassan was perfectly aware that without the compressing power of positive religion no society can well be held together. Whatever, therefore, his private opinions may have been, he resolved to impose on the bulk of his followers the most rigid obedience to the positive precepts of Islam, and, as we have seen, actually put his own son to death for a breach of one of them.