The Mana World Forums

Gouki wrote:Are you serious? This looks like a terrorist from irak, and the name too...an assassin is kind of ninja to me...o.O

Marco Polo wrote:The Old Man kept at his court such boys of twelve years old as seemed to him destined to become courageous men. When the Old Man sent them into the garden in groups of four, ten or twenty, he gave them hashish to drink. They slept for three days, then they were carried sleeping into the garden where he had them awakened.

When these young men woke, and found themselves in the garden with all these marvelous things, they truly believed themselves to be in paradise. And these damsels were always with them in songs and great entertainments; they received everything they asked for, so that they would never have left that garden of their own will.

And when the Old Man wished to kill someone, he would take him and say: ‘Go and do this thing. I do this because I want to make you return to paradise’. And the assassins go and perform the deed willingly.

— The Adventures of Marco Polo

I intended to use the name "Hassan", which is the root of "assassin".

Wikipedia wrote:The designation assassin is commonly believed to be a mutation of the Arabic haššāšīn (حشّاشين), an oblique plural of hashshash. It has also been suggested by some that assassin simply means followers of Hassan (or Hassan-i Sabbah). Although a contemporary variation on the theory described by Burman is that haššāšīn was a derogatory epithet applied by the sect's Syrian neighbors who regarded neighboring Nizaris with suspicion due to their secretive society, fondness for philosophy and heterodox theology which gained the ire of the more traditional. The term may have originated as a metaphor[6] to describe the Nizari's odd behavior as "crazed people," as in "those people who are addled, as if by cannabis", and that epithet may have gradually been presented as fact by later enemies of the sect. The Nizari use of narcotics has been dismissed as myth by contemporary scholars, but it must be remembered that it was a popular myth during the period. The term Hashshashin (a name given to them by rival Islamic sectarians) may have been derived from the Arabic "haššāšīn" (حشّاشين, "hashish user"), although this remains unclear. It may also refer to "those who produce hashish", however this etymology is also disputed. The word Hashish (of probable Persian origin) refers to resin collected from the cannabis flowers. An accurate definition of the word in Persian is actually "healers" or "herb sellers".[citation needed] The popular viewpoint may have influenced the crusaders, and certainly Marco Polo's fabled account of his visit to Alamut in 1273 makes reference to it.[7] By either or both of those two sources the corrupted term "assassin" may have entered western vocabulary.