It was a fearful period of murders and reprisals, equally destructive to the declared foes and friends of the new doctrine.[60] The former fell under the daggers of the Assassins, the latter under the sword of the princes, who, now roused to the dangers with which Hassan Sabah’s sect threatened all thrones, visited its partisans and adherents with proclamations and condemnation to death. The first imams and priests issued, voluntarily or by order, fetwas and judgments, in which the Ismailites were condemned and anathematized, as the most dangerous enemies of the throne and the altar, as hardened criminals and lawless atheists; and which delivered them over to the avenging arm of justice, either in open war, or as outlaws, as infidels, separatists, and rebels, whom to slay was a law of Islamism. The Imam Ghasali, one of the first moralists of Islam, and most celebrated Persian teachers of ethics, wrote a treatise, peculiarly directed against the adherents of the esoteric doctrine, entitled, _On the Folly of the Supporters of the doctrine of Indifference, that is, the impious (Mulahid), whom may God condemn_.[61] In that entitled, _Pearls of the Fetwas_,[62] a celebrated collection of legal decisions, the sect of the impious (Mulahid) of Kuhistan were condemned according to the ancient sentences of the Imams, Ebi Jussuf and Mohammed, pronounced against the Karmathites, and their lives and goods given as free prey to all the Moslemin. In the “_Confluence_” (Multakath), and the “_treasures of the Fetwas_” (Khasanetol Fetavi), even the repentance of the Mulhad, or the impious, is rejected as entirely invalid and impossible, if they have ever exercised the office of Dai, or missionary; and their execution commanded as legal, even though they become converts and wish to abjure their errors; because perjury itself was one of their maxims, and no recovery could be expected from libertine atheists. Thus, the minds of both parties were mutually embittered; governments and the order were at open war, and heads fell a rich harvest to the assassin’s dagger and the executioner’s sword.[63]