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Concept
Assassination
Summary
Assassination is the willful killing, by a sudden or secret attack, of a personespecially if prominent or important. It may be prompted by grievances, notoriety, financial, military, political or other motives. Many times governments, corporations, organized crime or their agents order assassinations. Acts of assassination have been performed since ancient times. A person who carries out an assassination is called an assassin or hitman.
Hashshashin
The word assassin may be derived from the Arabic asasiyyin (أَسَاسِيِّين, ʾasāsiyyīn) from أَسَاس (ʾasās, "foundation, basis") + ـِيّ (-iyy), meaning "people who are faithful to the foundation [of the faith]."
Assassin is often believed to derive from the word hashshashin (ħashshāshīyīn), and shares its etymological roots with hashish (hæˈʃiːʃ or ˈhæʃiːʃ; from حشيش DIN). It referred to a group of Nizari Ismailis known as the Order of Assassins who worked against various political targets.
Founded by Hassan-i Sabbah, the Assassins were active in the Near East from the 8th to the 14th centuries, and later expanded into a de facto state by acquiring or building many scattered strongholds. The group killed members of the Abbasid, Seljuk, Fatimid, and Christian Crusader elite for political and religious reasons.
Although it is commonly believed that Assassins were under the influence of hashish during their killings or during their indoctrination, there is debate as to whether these claims have merit, with many Eastern writers and an increasing number of Western academics coming to believe that drug-taking was not the key feature behind the name.
The earliest known use of the verb "to assassinate" in printed English was by Matthew Sutcliffe in A Briefe Replie to a Certaine Odious and Slanderous Libel, Lately Published by a Seditious Jesuite, a pamphlet printed in 1600, five years before it was used in Macbeth by William Shakespeare (1605).
History of assassination
Assassination is one of the oldest tools of power politics. It dates back at least as far as recorded history.
Official source
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