No less than three hundred men, women, and children, were cut in pieces, and about two hundred thrown into prison alive. Abulfettah,—not the one who was tortured to death by the sons of Khalaf, but a son of Abutaher, the goldsmith, and his successor, after his return to Persia, as head of the Assassins in Syria, met with a fate no less horrible and merited than his namesake: after being hewed to pieces at the gate looking towards Irak, his limbs were burnt, but his head was carried about through Syria for a show. The Dai Ismail, brother of the astrologer, who had first brought himself and his sect into credit with Riswan, paid for it with his life; several of the Assassins were thrown from the top of the wall into the moat; Hossameddin, son of Dimlatsh, a newly-arrived Dai from Persia, fled from the popular rage to Rakka, where he died; several also saved themselves by flight, and were dispersed in the towns of Syria; others, to escape the fatal suspicion of belonging to the order, denounced their brothers and murdered them. Their treasures were sought out and were confiscated.[78] They revenged this persecution variously and sanguinarily. In an audience, granted by the khalif of Bagdad to Togteghin Atabeg, of Damascus, three conspirators in succession attacked the Emir Ahmed Bal, governor of Khorassan, whom they probably mistook for the Atabeg. They all three fell, together with the emir, who had been selected for their daggers, and who was in reality their sworn foe, and had frequently besieged their castles. The governors of provinces, as being the principal instruments of the state for the preservation of peace and good order, were their natural enemies, and, as such, more than all exposed to their daggers. Bedii, the governor of Aleppo, became their victim,[79] as also one of his sons, who was on his way to the court of the Emir Ilghasi. His other sons cut down the two murderers, but a third sprang forward and gave one of them, who was already wounded, his death-blow. Being seized, and carried before the princes Togteghin and Ilghasi, he was condemned by them only to imprisonment, but he sought his death by drowning himself.