Assassination of Nizam al-Mulk

October 14, 1092

The Seljuk vizier, travelling from Isfahan to Baghdad, was stabbed by a disguised Nizari fedayi on the road. His murder, the first sensational act of Hassan-i Sabbah's new campaign, opened a crisis of succession in the Seljuk empire. His Siyasatnama survived him as a classic of Persian statecraft. The assassination inaugurated a century of targeted political killings that gave the word assassin to European languages.