can we explain the singular murder of this ambassador. The Templars did not wish to see the Icing's hands strengthened. As this strange association, the Order of Assassins, played a most important part in the political events of the period of which we are speaking, a more detailed account of their origin and tenets may not be out of place here. The national aversion of the Persians from the religion of their Mohammedan conquerors gave rise to a number of secret sects and societies having for their object the subversion of Islam, and in the hatred which already existed between the two great divisions of that creed, the Sunnis and Shiahs, the leaders and originators of these sects found a ready means of securing proselytes and adherents. In the year 815, a chief named Babek founded a new religious order and waged an open war against the Caliphs, by whom he was, however, defeated and exterminated. But while his partisans fell beneath the sword of the executioner there was living at Ah was, in the south of Persia, a certain 'Abdallah, grandson of Daisân the dualist, who had inherited the hatred which his grandfather had sworn against the faith and power of the Arabs. Warned by the fate of Babek's followers, he determined to undermine insidiously what he could not with safety openly attack. He accordingly formed a society into which proselytes were only admitted upon proof, and after being sworn to the profoundest secrecy. The initiation consist sd of seven degrees, in the last of which he taught—that all religions were mere chimeras and human actions indifferent. His missionaries spread over the whole of the East, and carried their peculiar doctrines into Syria, where one of them, named Ahmed ibn Eshk^as el Cannati, founded the sect of Carmathians, whose history has been already traced. 'Obeid allah el Mehdi, the founder of the Fatemite dynasty, was a follower of El Cannati, and from the moment when El Mehdi made himself master of Egypt the Carmathian tenets prevailed