Review of Alamut
By Marcel Štefancic, Jr.

"...a thoroughly compelling novel from cover to cover." --Midwest Book Review Paperback available through the trade from Random House Distribution Order from Amazon Click for Larger Image $10.00 The hardcover edition is available only through special orders Hardcover Ordering Options: FAX: 206.789.2221 PHONE: 206.706.3339     Secured by:

Marcel Štefancic is currently a film critic for the Mledina. This review appeared in Premiera and is reprinted here with permission of the author.

Everyone keeps saying Osama Bin Laden, Al-Qaida and Islamic fundamentalists are something new well, at least relatively new. Yet, whoever has read the Slovenian literary masterpiece, Alamut, can attest that these types of individuals and religious sects are anything but modern. It is apparent that they are something very old, so much so that they are even medieval.

Vladimir Bartol (1903-1967), the Slovenian Karl May, wrote and published Alamut in 1938, before World War II when the likes of Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin were terrorizing Europe. Leaning heavily on Marco Polo's accounts, his work has been translated into many languages, achieving recognition from Spain to Germany, France to Italy, Bosnia to Chechnya, and Turkey to Iran. This revived popular classic, rejected and ignored for decades in Slovenia, has been finally been reprinted and never has it seemed so fresh, so contemporary and so visionary.

Amazingly, it appears to have been written post 9-11. Whoever picks up a copy can only sigh … Oh s**t, Osama bin Laden, Al-Qaida and Islamic fundamentalism all existed in the year 1092! Of course they had different names: Osama bin Laden was called Hassan Ibn Sabbah … Al-Qaida were fedais … and Islamic fundamentalism was called Ismailism. Also, Bartol's antagonists were not based in Afghanistan; instead they rooted themselves in Iran in the impregnable fortress of Alamut, the Ismaili version of the Afghani Tora Bora complex. Even so, this difference is irrelevant because, if we remember the claim of some insiders, our modern foes fled from Afghanistan to neighboring Iran.

Bartol does not allow any doubts: "A Fedai is any Ismaili, who's ready to sacrifice himself without asking questions, when ordered to by his master. And he becomes a martyr if he dies." And the mystic Hassan Ibn Sabbah is also known as Seiduna, the new Prophet, the new Mohamed, the new Christ, Moses, and Al Mahdi "the master over life and death of all Ismailis, the head of all Ismailis who studies Koran the whole day, and who prays and composes sermons and fatwas. This leader of Ismailis, Hassan Ibn Sabbah, is assembling his "troop of selected followers, whose ultimate reason is the sacrifice and martyrdom for the holy cause," in the "fedai school" at the castle of Alamut.

Al-Qaida, huh? Osama bin Laden, oh wait … hold on, excuse me … Hassan, "the terrible dreamer from hell," wants to strike at the Turkish sultan, his great vesir, the false caliph, the foreign despots. He wants to kick off "the strife against the false religion," against the humanity "strayed in falsehoods." The fedais have a number of cells, that is, fortresses (like Al-Qaida), and they are enlisting rich sponsors in Islamic countries (also like Al-Qaida). To quote Hassan, the Jihad Fuehrer, "Our cause must become so strong, that it will resist any enemy and if necessary the whole world. It is to become a ruling body of our planet. To achieve this, we count on our death-loving followers. By letting them die, we will be offering them our special grace. Of course they will not chose by themselves the way they die. Every single death, we will permit, will have to mean another big victory."

It is easy to understand, why there's huge head money written out on him, because the word of mouth says "among men, who ever have inhabited this earth, he is the most powerful." Namely, Allah gave Hassan the "key to open doors of paradise" where the martyrs will "partake in eternal splendors" and receive "the ultimate reward for their devotion and self-sacrifice." But, as ibn Sabbah states, "You can forget any thought of becoming a prophet if you don't have the key to open the door to paradise for the living." Given the problem that "so far nobody has ever returned to tell, everything is as the Prophet has been proclaiming," how then does a leader convince his fedais, these burning Islamic terrorists, that they should "long for death", that they should "fall in love with death," and that they should "die with a smile on their face, seeing in their mind the splendors that wait for them on the other side?" In order to convince the fedais that they can truly expect paradise on the other side of the big divide, ibn Sabbah created gardens "that mirror the true paradise."

Turning the fairy tale into reality, creating paradise on earth (or at least on Alamut), where clandestinely, in complete and absolute secrecy, without the knowledge of anyone, first and foremost his fedais, Hassan has built a parallel world; a replica of paradise, including fairytale gardens, crystal streams, glass pavilions, cushioned reclining beds, magnificently manicured groves, bushy trees, pebble-covered paths, circular fish ponds, flower beds covered with gracious exotic flowers, soft-winged girls with black almond-shaped eyes and white limbs, the most exquisite dishes and drinks, fried birds, poached fish, sweets, figs, melons, oranges, peaches, grapes, milk and honey, silver diadems, studded with precious stones, pearl necklaces, golden bracelets and broaches, magnificent turquoise jewelry, earrings with diamonds and sapphires, silken gowns and unbounded fragrances essentially, the perfect party in heaven, a manicured cocktail mix of delight, magnificence and bliss.

When his paradise was completed, all Hassan needed to do was drug his hashisheans with dope - cannabis, "hash balls," the "wonder drug of Thousand and One Nights" - and transport them to his secret hereafter, where girls have been instructed to behave like they were the virgins of the real paradise (the fedais must have really been in heaven). Given the tangible, sensual visits to Hassan's secret gardens, the fedais become convinced that Paradise is a reality. They eagerly share their stories with others, fueling and increasing believers, creating and encouraging suicide assassins in the name of a holy cause and a wonderful eternity. Of his new troops, Hassan proclaims, "We have evolved and grown into a force of steel. We have schooled and educated followers, who no other ruler can boast with. Their zeal is legendary. Their resolve is unmatched. Their loyalty is without compare."

Of course, given its apparent power, the Turkish sultan wants to destroy Ismailism at any price and that is why he decides to attack Alamut with an immense army. Similar to the speech of George W. Bush, the sultan declares, "The universe is hanging on the knife's edge." But, alas, the Turks cannot defeat Alamut. And they cannot take Hassan Ibn Sabbah. Ever. Strangely enough, it's more the other way around. With each new Turkish assault, new Ismaili forts are built, new cells appear. Eventually, in the end, Hassan locks himself off in his quarters and dies off for the world, but his brand of Ismailism, as the modern world has come to learn, lives on and on.

In 1938 Vladimir Bartol sent a synopsis to Alamut to Hollywood, to the legendary MGM studios, but they did not respond. If they would have, today we might be saying that 9-11 - the attack on America and the continued retaliation - was just a product of a film. However, it might have to be a retrospective. Alamut is a movie; it reads as a ready-to-be-shot film treatment. You don't have to cut anything. You don't need to add anything either. As Bartol wrote some time ago, "I felt that I was at the same time writing for readers who'll live half a century in the future." It is clear that Alamut is both a voice from antiquity, of modernity, and from far beyond.