Assassins and Templars

The story of the medieval worlds most extraordinary organisations, the Assassins and the Templars The Assassins and the Templars are two of historys most legendary groups. One was a Shiite religious sect, the other a Christian military order created to defend the Holy Land. Violently opposed, they had vastly different reputations, followings, and ambitions. Yet they developed strikingly similar strategiesand their intertwined stories have, oddly enough, uncanny parallels. In this engaging account, Steve Tibble traces the history of these two groups from their origins to their ultimate destruction. He shows how, outnumbered and surrounded, they survived only by perfecting the promise of death, either in the form of a Templar charge or an Assassins dagger. Death, for themselves or their enemies, was at the core of these extraordinary organisations. Their fanaticism changed the medieval worldand, even up to the present day, in video games and countless conspiracy theories, they have become endlessly conjoined in myth and memory.