Amin Maalouf - Samarkand

He had a vacant look about him.

‘Seventy-four years. Seventy-four years which have passed before my eyes. So much deceit, so many regrets and so many things I would have experienced differently!’

His eyes were half-closed, his lips contorted:

‘Woe betide you, Khayyam! You are to blame for Hassan Sabbah being able to perpetrate his misdeeds.’

Omar had wanted to reply: ‘How much you and Hassan have in common! If you are seduced by a cause such as building an empire or preparing for the reign of the Imam, you do not think twice about killing in order to make your scheme triumph. In my opinion, any cause which involves killing no longer attracts me. It becomes unattractive to me, it becomes sordid and debased, no matter how beautiful it may have been. No cause can be just when it allies itself to death.’ He wanted to shout it out, but he got the better of himself and remained silent. He had decided to allow his friend to slide peacefully toward his fate.

In spite of this trying night, Nizam ended up by resigning himself to his fate. He became used to the idea of not existing any more. However, from one day to the next he turned aside from affairs of state and determined that he ought to devote what time remained to him to completing a book, Siyasset-Nameh , the Treatise of Government. This was a remarkable work, the Muslim world’s equivalent of Machiavelli’s The Prince , which was to appear in the West four centuries later with one crucial difference. The Prince is the work of a man disappointed by politics and thwarted from having any power while the Siyasset-Nameh is the fruit of the irreplaceable experience of an empire builder.

Thus, at the very moment when Hassan Sabbah had just conquered the unassailable sanctuary of which he had long dreamt, the empire’s strongman was concerned only with his own place in History. He preferred words of truth over pleasantries and was prepared to defy the Sultan to the very end. It could be said that he wanted a spectacular death, a death that befitted him.

He was to obtain it.

When Malikshah received the delegation which had come from meeting Nizam, he could not believe what he was told.

‘Did he really say that he was my associate, my equal?’

When the emissaries dolefully confirmed this, the Sultan let his anger come pouring out. He spoke of having his tutor impaled, dismembered alive or crucified on the battlements of the citadel. Then he rushed off to announce to Terken Khatun that he had finally decided to discharge Nizam al-Mulk from all his duties and that he wished to see his death. It only remained to work out how he could be executed without provoking any reaction from the numerous regiments who were still loyal to him. However, Terken and Jahan had their own idea: since Hassan also wanted to see Nizam’s death, why not facilitate the matter for him, while leaving Malikshah free from suspicion?’

An army corps was thus sent out to Alamut, under the command of a man loyal to the Sultan. The ostensible objective was to lay siege to the Ismailis’ fortress but in reality it was a smoke-screen so that negotiations could take place without rousing suspicions and the course of events was planned down to the very details. The Sultan would lure Nizam to Nahavand, a city equidistant from Isfahan and Alamut. Once there, the Assassins would take over.

Texts from the time report that Hassan Sabbah gathered his men together and addressed them as follows: ‘Which man amongst you will rid this country of the evil Nizam al-Mulk?’ A man named Arrani placed his hand on his chest as a sign of acceptance, the master of Alamut charged him with the mission and added: ‘The murder of this demon is the gateway to happiness.’

During this period Nizam stayed shut up in his residence. Those who had previously visited his diwan had deserted him upon learning of his disgrace, and only Khayyam and officers of the nizamiya guard frequented his residence. He spent most of his time at his desk. He scribbled away furiously and sometimes asked Omar to read it over.

As he read through the text, Omar gave off a smile or a grimace here and there. In the evening of his life, Nizam could not resist shooting off a few arrows and settling some accounts — for example, with Terken Khatun. The forty-third chapter was titled ‘On women who live behind the tent-work’. ‘In ancient times,’ Nizam wrote, ‘the spouse of a king had great influence over him and there resulted therefrom nothing but discord and troubles. I shall say no more about it, for anyone can observe such things in other epochs.’ He added: ‘For an undertaking to succeed, it must be carried out the opposite way to what women say.’

The following six chapters were devoted to the Ismailis and ended as follows: ‘I have spoken of this sect so that people can be on their guard … My words will be remembered when these infidels manage to annihilate people close to the Sultan as well as statesmen, when their drums sound everywhere and their designs are unveiled. In the midst of the resultant tumult the Prince will surely know that everything I have said is the truth. May the Almighty preserve our master and the empire from an evil fate!’

The day when a messenger arrived from the Sultan to see him and invite him to join him on a trip to Baghdad, the Vizir had not a moment’s doubt of what was in store for him. He called Khayyam to take his leave of him.

‘In your condition, you should not cover such distances,’ Khayyam told him.

‘In my condition nothing matters anymore, and it is not the journey which will kill me.’

Omar was lost for words. Nizam kissed him and dismissed him amicably, before going to bow before the man who had condemned him. With supreme elegance, recklessness and perversity, the Sultan and the Vizir were both playing with death.

When they were en route for the place of trial, Malikshah questioned his ‘father’:

‘How long do you think you will yet live?’

Nizam replied without a hint of hesitation:

‘A long time, a very long time.’

The Sultan was distraught:

‘You can still get away with being arrogant with me, but with God! How can you be so sure. You ought to call upon His will to be done for He is the arbiter of life!’

‘I replied thus because I had a dream last night. I saw our Prophet, God bless and preserve him. I asked him when I was going to die and I received a reassuring response.’

Malikshah grew impatient:

‘What reply?’

‘The Prophet told me: “You are a pillar of Islam. You behave properly toward those around you, your existence is of value to the believers and I thus am giving you the privilege of choosing when you will die.” I replied: “God forbid. What man could choose such a day! One would always want more, and even if I determined the most distant date possible, I would live on obsessed by its approach. On the eve of that day, whether it were in a month or a hundred year’s time, I would shake with fear. I do not wish to choose the date. The only favour I ask, beloved Prophet, is not to outlive my master, Sultan Malikshah. I have seen him grow up and have heard him call me “father”, and I would not wish to undergo the humiliation and the suffering of seeing him dead.” “Granted!” the Prophet said to me. “You will die forty days before the Sultan.”’

Malikshah’s face was pale and he was trembling so much that he almost gave himself away. Nizam smiled:

‘You see, I am not showing any arrogance. I am now sure that I will live a long time.’

Was the Sultan tempted, at that moment, to forgo having his Vizir killed? He would have been well advised to do so. Even if the dream was only a parable, Nizam in fact took formidable precautions. On the eve of his departure, the officers of his guard, assembled at his side, had sworn one after another with their hands placed on the Book that, should he be killed, not a single one of his enemies would live on!