The khalif went from Ramadan to Ispahan where he had just begun to recover from an attack of illness. Four Assassins, natives of Khorassan, and who had mingled with his retinue, watched an opportunity of stealing into his tent, and poniarded him. He was buried on the spot where he fell; and the troops which he had collected from Bagdad, for the purpose of a campaign against the Ismailites, dispersed. When the news of this successful atrocity, and the frustrated expedition reached Alamut, the residence of the grand-master, public festivals and rejoicings were appointed on the occasion. For seven days and seven nights the kettle drums and cornets echoed from the turrets of the fortress, and published to the surrounding castles the jubilee of crime and the triumph of murder. Proofs so cutting as the Assassins’ daggers (to use an expression of Mirkhond) raised their claims beyond the reach of doubts, and imposed the silence of the grave on their opponents. A terror but too well founded seized the khalifs of the race of Abbas, who, henceforth, did not venture to show themselves in public. The companions of impiety (Refik), and the dedicated to murder (Fedavi), spread themselves in troops over the whole of Asia, and darkened the face of the earth. The castles already in their possession were maintained and fortified, and new ones built or purchased. Thus they obtained in Syria, Kadmos, Kahaf, and Massiat: the two former were sold to them by Ibn Amrun;[129] the latter they wrested from the commandant of the lords of Sheiser,[130] and made it the centre of their Syrian power, where, even now, traces of it are to be found.[131]