In this spirit, during the reign of Kia Mohammed, which lasted twenty-five years,—that of his father, Kia Busurgomid, of fourteen years,—and that of the founder, Hassan Sabah, of thirty-five, the external rites of Islamism were strictly observed. Kia Mohammed, however, had neither the intellect nor the experience of his predecessors; and it soon appeared what an error Kia Busurgomid had committed, in consulting, in his choice of a successor, the ties of kindred rather than innate talent. From his want of knowledge and capacity, Kia Mohammed was but little esteemed by the people, who transferred their attachment to his son, Hassan. The latter was regarded as a man of great attainments, and he availed himself of the good opinion of the ignorant multitude, not for the general interest of the order, but entirely contrary to its institutions, to serve the purposes of his own private ambition. Initiated into all the mysteries of the secret doctrine, deeply versed in philosophy and history, he stood forward as a popular teacher and expounder, and favoured the report which had begun to be spread abroad, that he was the imam promised by Hassan-ben-Sabah. The companions of the order respected him more and more every day, and rivalled each other in the promptitude with which they executed his behests. Kia Mohammed, on learning his son’s conduct, and the disposition of the people, convened them, and declaring his disapprobation of the proceedings of the former, said, “Hassan is my son, and I am not the imam, but one of his precursors. Whoever maintains the contrary is an infidel.” Two hundred and fifty of his son’s adherents were put to death, and as many more were banished. Hassan, fearing his father’s anger, himself anathematised the illuminati, and wrote treatises in which he condemned the opinions of his partisans, and asserted those of his father. In this manner he succeeded, by his dissimulation, in preserving his own head, and obliterating all suspicion from his father’s mind. As, however, he was in the habit of drinking wine in secret, and permitted himself to practise what was forbidden, his adherents saw, in these actions, new indications of his mission as the promised imam, whose advent was to abrogate all prohibitory commands.[133]