NOTE 2.—­Hammer mentions as what he chooses to call “Grand Priors” under the Shaikh or “Grand Master” at Alamut, the chief, in Syria, one in the Kuhistan of E. Persia (Tun-o-Kain), one in Kumis (the country about Damghan and Bostam), and one in Irak; he does not speak of any in Kurdistan.  Colonel Monteith, however, says, though without stating authority or particulars, “There were several divisions of them (the Assassins) scattered throughout Syria, Kurdistan (near the Lake of Wan), and Asia Minor, but all acknowledging as Imaum or High Priest the Chief residing at Alamut.”  And it may be noted that Odoric, a generation after Polo, puts the Old Man at Millescorte, which looks like Malasgird, north of Lake Van, (H. des Assass. p. 104; J.  R. G. S. III. 16; Cathay, p. ccxliii.)

[1] This story has been transferred to Peter the Great, who is alleged to
    have exhibited the docility of his subjects in the same way to the
    King of Denmark, by ordering a Cossack to jump from the Round Tower at
    Copenhagen, on the summit of which they were standing.

CHAPTER XXV.

HOW THE OLD MAN CAME BY HIS END.

Now it came to pass, in the year of Christ’s Incarnation, 1252, that Alaue, Lord of the Tartars of the Levant, heard tell of these great crimes of the Old Man, and resolved to make an end of him.  So he took and sent one of his Barons with a great Army to that Castle, and they besieged it for three years, but they could not take it, so strong was it.  And indeed if they had had food within it never would have been taken.  But after being besieged those three years they ran short of victual, and were taken.  The Old Man was put to death with all his men [and the Castle with its Garden of Paradise was levelled with the ground].  And since that time he has had no successor; and there was an end to all his villainies.[NOTE 1]

Now let us go back to our journey.

NOTE 1.—­The date in Pauthier is 1242; in the G. T. and in Ramusio 1262. 
Neither is right, nor certainly could Polo have meant the former.

When Mangku Kaan, after his enthronement (1251), determined at a great Kurultai or Diet, on perfecting the Mongol conquests, he entrusted his brother Kublai with the completion of the subjugation of China and the adjacent countries, whilst his brother Hulaku received the command of the army destined for Persia and Syria.  The complaints that came from the Mongol officers already in Persia determined him to commence with the reduction of the Ismailites, and Hulaku set out from Karakorum in February, 1254.  He proceeded with great deliberation, and the Oxus was not crossed till January, 1256.  But an army had been sent long in advance under “one of his Barons,” Kitubuka Noyan, and in 1253 it was already actively engaged in besieging the Ismailite fortresses.  In 1255, during the progress of the