Those who were of the highest rank were the first to fall: such were the Emir Borsak, who had been appointed by Togrul-beg first governor of Bagdad, and Araash Nisami, to whom Yakut, the uncle of Barkyarok, the reigning Seljukide sultan, had given his daughter in marriage.[64] The civil war between the brothers, Barkyarok and Mohammed,[65] concerning the territories of Irak and Khorassan, facilitated the execution of Hassan’s ambitious designs; and in the bloody hotbed of intestine discord, the poisonous plant of murder and sedition flourished. By degrees, his partisans made themselves masters of the strongest castles of Irak, and even of that of Ispahan, called _Shah durr_ (_the king’s pearl_), built by Melekshah. That prince, hunting once near this place, in company with the ambassador of the Roman emperor at Constantinople, a hound strayed to an inaccessible mountain plateau, on which the castle was afterwards situated. The envoy observed, that, in his master’s territories, a place presenting so many natural advantages of fortification would not be neglected, and that on the spot a fortress would long ago have been erected. The sultan availed himself of the ambassador’s suggestion and the situation, and the castle was built, which was wrested by the Ismailites out of the hands of its commander. This gave rise to the saying—“A fort, the situation of which a dog pointed out and an infidel advised, could only bring perdition.” Besides the _king’s pearl_, they took also the castles of Derkul and Khalenjan, near Ispahan, the last, five farsangs distant from that city; the castle of Wastamkuh, near Abhar; those of Tambur and Khalowkhan, between Fars and Kuhistan; those of Damaghan, Firuskuh, and Kirdkuh, in the province of Komis; and, lastly, in Kuhistan, those of Tabs, Kain, Toon, and several others in the district of Muminabad.[66] Abulfettah, Hassan’s nephew, captured Esdahan, and Kia Busurgomid took Lamsir, both of them being, together with Reis Mosaffer, and Hossein Kaini, as Dais, energetic promulgators of the doctrine, and supporters of the greatness of Hassan Sabah, whose most intimate friends and confidants they were, as Abubekr, Omar, Osman, and Ali, had been those of the prophet. The acquisition of these fortresses, excepting those of Alamut and Wastamkuh, which came into the possession of the Ismailites ten years earlier, happened the year after the taking of Jerusalem by the Crusaders.[67] Christianity and infidelity, the cross of the pious warriors and the dagger of the Assassins, at the same time conspired the ruin of Mohammedanism and its monarchies.