Notwithstanding the people were entirely devoted to the true doctrine of Islamism, still it appears that the order preserved its existence in secret, long after the loss of temporal power, in the hope of, sometime or other, recovering it, under more favourable circumstances. The Ismailites, indeed, no longer ventured to unsheath the dagger against their foes; but the chief aim of their policy, to acquire influence in affairs of state, remained; they, in particular, sought to make proselytes of the members of the divan; in order, by this means, to secure the majority of voices in their favour, and to stifle in their birth, all complaints and denunciations of their secret doctrine. For this reason, the author of “Jehan Kusha, (_Conqueror of the World_),” as well as the writer of the “Siasset-ol-Moluk” (_Art of Governing; or, Discipline of Kings_), warns princes to place in the divan none of the officers of Kuhistan, who were more or less to be suspected, on account of their principles. When intrusted with the management of the finances, they were, indeed, never in arrear with their contracts; so that the public treasury had never any claims against them; they, however, ruined the villages which they farmed, and sent the surplus of the taxes to their secret superiors, who still preserved an existence at Alamut, the centre of the ancient splendour of the order. Thither also flowed a portion of the revenues of pious institutions, the produce of which was destined for the support of mosques and schools, servants of religion, and teachers. Similar well-intentioned warnings have, in our own times, been frequently given to princes: the attentive ear of government is always the most powerful obstacle to the rise of secret orders and societies to power. Remains of the Ismailites still exist both in Persia and Syria,[291] but merely as one of the many sects and heresies of Islamism, without any claims to power, without the means of obtaining their former importance, of which they seem, in fact, to have lost all remembrance. The policy of the secret state-subverting doctrine of the first lodge of the Ismailites, and the murderous tactics of the Assassins, are equally foreign to them. Their writings are a shapeless mixture of Ismailite and Christian traditions, glossed over with the ravings of the mystic theology. Their places of abode are, both in Persia and Syria, those of their forefathers, in the mountains of Irak, and at the foot of Antilebanon.[292]