The hopes of booty every year attracted new hordes and tribes, which poured down from Mount Caucasus, Mount Taurus, from Koraçan and the banks of the Tigris. These tribes, for the most part wild and barbarous, mingled among the Mussulmans of Syria and Mesopotamia, and replaced in armies and cities the hosts which war had swept away. Among the tribes which had thus established themselves in Syria, history must not forget that of the _assassins_ or Ismaëlians, whose sect had sprung up, towards the commencement of the eleventh century, in the mountains of Persia. A short time before the first crusade, they took possession of a part of Libanus, and founded a colony between Tripoli and Tortosa, which colony was governed by a chief whom the Franks called—_the Old Man, or the Lord of the Mountain_. The chief of the Ismaëlians only reigned over about twenty castles or towns, and scarcely more than sixty thousand subjects; but he had converted despotism into a species of worship, and his authority was without bounds. His subjects considered that he alone was the depositary of the laws of Mahomet, and that all who opposed his will merited death. The Old Man of the Mountains, according to the belief of the Ismaëlians, could distribute, at his pleasure, the delights of Paradise to his servants; that he who died in an act of obedience to his chief, ascended to heaven, whither the prophet of Mecca welcomed him, whilst he who died in his bed went through long probationary pains in the next world. The Ismaëlians were divided into three classes: the people, the soldiers, and the _guards_. The people lived by the cultivation of the lands and by commerce; they were docile, laborious, sober, and patient: nothing could exceed the skill, strength, and courage of the soldiers, whose qualities were particularly valued in the defence or sieges of cities. The greater part of the Mussulman princes were very desirous of having them in their pay.