Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
Sign In
Text size
100%
Theme
Open Question

What Was the True Death Toll of the Nizari-Seljuk Conflicts?

Open Question

The surviving chronicles, compiled generations after the events by dynasties hostile to the Nizaris, report figures for distinct episodes (assassinated officials, massacred communities, one city's casualties) rather than a single reconciled total, and modern historians including Lewis and Daftary have not synthesized them into an agreed toll for the century-long conflict.

What would resolve this A systematic cross-check of the Persian chronicle tradition against surviving documentary and archaeological evidence from the Nizari strongholds and the Seljuk provinces, of the kind that could distinguish which reported episodes are independently corroborated from which are hostile chronicle embellishment.
OpenMedieval Islamic history; Persian and Arabic chronicle source criticismFarhad Daftary, The Assassin Legends: Myths of the Ismailis
Connections

Question On

No historian consulted has reconciled the chronicle tradition's separate episode-level figures into an agreed total for the century-long conflict.

Sources
The Assassin Legends: Myths of the Ismailis
Farhad Daftary, I. B. Tauris, London, 1994
The Assassins: A Radical Sect in Islam
Bernard Lewis, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1967
Comments (0)
No comments yet. Be the first to share a thought.
Reader Challenges (0)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.