Nizari Ismaili state

Gumushtekin does something that will haunt Saladin for years afterward.

He appeals for aid not only to the Zengid lord of Mosul, whose family still harbors ambitions over the whole of Nur ad-Din's former territory, but also, in a move of chilling desperation, to the Nizari Ismailis, the sect the Crusaders call the Assassins, whose fortress strongholds in the mountains west of Homs have made them one of the most feared and mysterious forces in the region.

Saladin does not know, as he sits before Aleppo's walls directing his siege engines and negotiating with wavering local notables inside the city, that he has just become the target of a conspiracy that will, within weeks, put a blade almost literally against his throat.

The attempt comes at night.

The house that Saladin is building, soon to be known to history as the Ayyubid dynasty, named for his father, Ayyub, now has a foundation that rests on more than swords alone.

But legitimacy on parchment does not end resistance in the field, and the years that follow, 1176, 1177, 1178, are years of continued, often frustrating campaigning, punctuated by fresh dangers that test Saladin's resolve as thoroughly as anything that came before.

In the spring of 1176, the Nizari Ismailis try again.

This second assassination attempt comes even closer to succeeding than the first.

They fought Muslim rulers, but also negotiated, made truces, exchanged envoys and participated in the pragmatic diplomacy of the Crusader states.

They also interacted with the Syrian Nizari Ismailis.

or Ismailis, the community transformed in European legend into the assassins.

That contact is real.

And so the last one supposedly went into hiding or occultation and will return at the end of time.

There is one Shia group, the Ismailis, who have a, or at least the Nizari Ismailis, they have an active imam still, who claims successorship all the way back from Muhammad.

And that's not the case for Sunnis.

So keep in mind that these Shia leaders are religious leaders.