While the eunuch was concerting Salaheddin’s fall, he scarcely escaped his own; which his enemies, the vizier Shehabeddin Abu Saleh, and the emirs Jemaleddin, Shadbakht, and Mojahid, had conspired to ensure, in order to deprive him of the favour of Meleksaleh. To anticipate their purpose, he had recourse to the usual means dictated by his policy. As the young prince was starting on a hunting excursion, Gumushteghin presented him with a blank sheet of paper, desiring his signature for the despatch of some pressing business. Meleksaleh signed unsuspectingly, and his minister filled the paper with a letter from his master to Sinan, the grand-prior of the Assassins, requesting agents from him, for the purpose of despatching the three emirs above-mentioned. Sinan, thinking that Meleksaleh wished, by this deed, to remove some obstacles to his unbounded power, sent several murderers. Two of them, who attacked the vizier as he was proceeding to a mosque, lying near his house, without the eastern gate, were killed on the spot. Soon after, Mojahid was set upon by three others: one seized the skirt of his mantle, to stab with more certainty; but Mojahid spurred his horse, and escaped the fatal blow, leaving his mantle behind. The people seized the Assassins, two of whom were accustomed frequently to visit Mojahid’s groom. One of them was crucified; and the same was the fate of the groom, on whose breast was fixed the inscription, “This is the reward of the concealers of villains.” The other Assassin was dragged to the citadel, and beaten on the pierced soles of his feet, to compel him to confess the motives of his crime. In the midst of the torture, he called out to the young prince: “Thou desirest from our lord Sinan, the death of thy slaves, and now thou punishest us for the execution of thy orders.” Indignant at this, Meleksaleh wrote a letter, full of reproaches, to Sinan, who returned him one subscribed by himself as his answer. This was the origin of a kind of correspondence between them. Rashideddin had frequently applied to the prince, for the restoration of the district of Hajira, of which the Ismailites had been deprived. As his writing had been fruitless, he had recourse, this time, not from the pen to the dagger, but to the still more destructive means, fire. The Assassins appeared as incendiaries, who set fire to several bazaars of Aleppo, with burning naphtha. All the efforts of the governor and his people to extinguish the conflagration were fruitless, which being produced by means similar to the celebrated Greek fire, resisted pertinaciously the action of water. Many buildings were entirely consumed, and an immense quantity of rich stuffs and commodities of all kinds fell a prey to the flames. The Assassins threw burning naphtha into the streets, from the terraces of the houses, and, in the midst of the confusion, escaped the popular rage unhurt.[194]