Thus the standard of the freest infidelity and most daring libertinism floated on all the castles of Rudbar and Kuhistan, as the insignia of the new doctrine; and instead of the name of the Egyptian khalif, that of Hassan resounded from all the pulpits, as that of the true successor of the prophet. Since prejudices are often more deeply rooted in the breast than religious rites and moral laws, it was easier for Hassan to assume the character of legislator than that of imam, whom the people hitherto only acknowledged in the Egyptian khalif. In order to support his pretensions to this title, he at length found it necessary to deduce his descent in blood from the Fatimite khalifs; and although he had, in the public assembly of the 17th Ramadan, called himself the son of Mohammed Ben Busurgomid, he endeavoured to prove, partly by dark intimations, partly by ambiguous writings, the opinion that he was a son of Nesar’s and grandson of the Khalif Mostanssur, during whose reign the founder, Hassan Ben Sabah, had been at Cairo, and had, in the political dissensions of the Ismailites, espoused the party of Mostanssur’s elder son against his younger brother, Nesar; on which account he had been compelled by the generalissimo, Bedr Jemali, to quit Egypt, as we have before related more at length. The rumour which his adherents dispersed abroad in confirmation of his descent was to this effect. A certain Abulhassan Seide, a confidant of the Khalif Mostanssur, had come from Egypt to Alamut a year after his patron’s death, and had brought with him a son of Nesar’s, whom he confided to the care of Hassan Ben Sabah, who received the envoy with great respect, and had assigned to the young imam a village at the foot of the castle as a residence, where he, after a time, married, and gave his son the name, “Blessed be his Memory.” At the same time that the imam’s wife was delivered of this child, the wife of the grand-master, Mohammed, son of Busurgomid, was in her accouchement. A confidential female servant carried the young “Blessed be his Memory” into the castle, and substituted him in the place of the son of Mohammed. As this tale was too absurd to meet with easy credence, and as, according to their pure doctrine, that all was indifferent and nothing forbidden, the assertors of this genealogy were not ashamed subsequently to maintain that the young imam had had clandestine intercourse with Mohammed’s wife, the fruit of which was the reigning grand-master, imam, and khalif, Blessed be his Memory. Thus, Hassan preferred being thought a bastard of the blood of the khalifs, to being deemed his father’s legitimate child. The honour of the mother was sacrificed to the ambition of the son; and because adultery afforded grounds to his pretensions, the sanctity of the harem was forced to give place to the merit of ambition.