The explanation of the name MULEHET as it is in Ramusio, or Mulcete as it is in the G. Text (the last expressing in Rusticiano’s Pisan tongue the strongly aspirated Mulhete), is given by the former:  “This name of Mulehet is as much as to say in the Saracen tongue ’The Abode of Heretics,’” the fact being that it does represent the Arabic term Mulhid, pl. Mulahidah, “Impii, heretici,” which is in the Persian histories (as of Rashiduddin and Wassaf) the title most commonly used to indicate this community, and which is still applied by orthodox Mahomedans to the Nosairis, Druses, and other sects of that kind, more or less kindred to the Ismaili.  The writer of the Tabakat-i-Nasiri calls the sectarians of Alamut Mulahidat-ul-maut, “Heretics of Death."[1] The curious reading of the G. Text which we have preserved “vaut a dire des Aram,” should be read as we have rendered it.  I conceive that Marco was here unconsciously using one Oriental term to explain another.  For it seems possible to explain Aram only as standing for Haram, in the sense of “wicked” or “reprobate.”

In Pauthier’s Text, instead of des aram, we find “veult dire en francois Diex Terrien,” or Terrestrial God.  This may have been substituted, in the correction of the original rough dictation, from a perception that the first expression was unintelligible.  The new phrase does not indeed convey the meaning of Mulahidah, but it expresses a main characteristic of the heretical doctrine.  The correction was probably made by Polo himself; it is certainly of very early date.  For in the romance of Bauduin de Sebourc, which I believe dates early in the 14th century, the Caliph, on witnessing the extraordinary devotion of the followers of the Old Man (see note 1, ch. xxiv.), exclaims: 

  “Par Mahon ... 
  Vous estes Diex en terre, autre coze n’i a!” (I. p. 360.)

So also Fr. Jacopo d’Aqui in the Imago Mundi, says of the Assassins:  “Dicitur iis quod sunt in Paradiso magno Dei Terreni”—­expressions, no doubt, taken in both cases from Polo’s book.

Khanikoff, and before him J. R. Forster, have supposed that the name Mulehet represents Alamut.  But the resemblance is much closer and more satisfactory to Mulhid or Mulahidah. Mulhet is precisely the name by which the kingdom of the Ismailites is mentioned in Armenian history, and Mulihet is already applied in the same way by Rabbi Benjamin in the 12th century, and by Rubruquis in the 13th.  The Chinese narrative of Hulaku’s expedition calls it the kingdom of Mulahi. (Joinville, p. 138; J.  As. ser.  II., tom. xii. 285; Benj.  Tudela, p. 106; Rub. p. 265; Remusat, Nouv.  Melanges, I. 176; Gaubil, p. 128; Pauthier, pp. cxxxix.-cxli.; Mon.  Hist.  Patr.  Scriptorum, III. 1559, Turin, 1848.) [Cf. on Mulehet, melahideh, Heretics, plural of molhid.  Heretic, my note, pp. 476-482 of my ed. of Friar Odoric.—­H.  C.]