# Assassination Organizations



## Centerfield97

I'm trying to find evidence of assassination organizations throughout history...from Ancient Greece/Rome to the Medieval time period.  I'm not having very much luck.  From what you guys know, are assassins typically just individuals alone?  Or is there actually evidence of over arching organizations (other than the mob etc.)?


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## Devor

I've only heard of one real world organization which came close to the assassins organizations we see in some works, and half of what we know about them is myth.

That's the ninja.

Otherwise I think it's been closer to hit men and thugs and mafioso.  Hit men might have a support network, but it wouldn't really be an organization.  Thugs, of course, would be organized but wouldn't really rely on subterfuge.  The Mafia, though, has a long history in southern Italy you might look into, but typically they issued hits and weren't for hire in that way.

One more possibility, there may be assassin groups within certain militaries.  Look up snipers.


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## Johnny Cosmo

Also: Assassins - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


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## ShortHair

Try the Fu Manchu books. You'll find the thuggee (or phansigar), dacoits, and many more.


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## Foxmc

The Assassins (as mentioned in Johnny's link also feature prominently in the history of the Crusades. Their leader was called The Old Man of the Mountain. Now how's that for a title.


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## Centerfield97

Foxmc said:


> The Assassins (as mentioned in Johnny's link also feature prominently in the history of the Crusades. Their leader was called The Old Man of the Mountain. Now how's that for a title.



That is a very easily allusioned title, thank you sir


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## Larkin

They were bodyguards, not assassins, but for an interesting organization with a lot of Wiki-available information to start you off, you might also look up the Janissaries of the Ottoman Empire. Their whole "recruitment" (basically press-ganging) was an organized system that might provide you with a real-world counterpart should you want to go the way of a more systematized assassins' squad for your fantasy story.


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## Ravana

Actually, the janissaries originally fell somewhere between press-ganged and hostages: except perhaps in their earliest days, they were the children of Christian subjects who were taken for military training and Islamic (re)education (the name comes from Turkish _yeni Ã§eri_, "new soldier"–which also ought to let you know how it should be pronounced, though as usual English screwed this up…); by the time they were dissolved, it wasn't unknown to find children whose parents enrolled them voluntarily (it was a great career), though these would never have made up the majority. Along the way, the janissaries became the first standing army in the post-Roman west (as opposed to troops raised at need by feudal systems), and rapidly became the Ottomans' elite forces… and ultimately its Praetorian Guard, should anyone recall how they turned out in the end. They were also the first large-scale force to be equipped primarily with firearms, which contributed no small part to their success. 

The Mamelukes (or Mamluks) were a comparable force with a slightly different origin, and, while they actually managed to take control of a country (Egypt) for a few centuries, ultimately enjoyed a somewhat shorter history as a military force to be reckoned with… courtesy of the janissaries (even in the 1500s, guns beat cavalry). Neither was even remotely an "assassin" organization–as Larkin mentioned–but some aspects of their recruitment and training could serve as inspiration.

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As for the original question: the main reason you haven't found information on assassin organizations is that there basically weren't any. Not even the ninja… not even the Nizari Ismai'li sect that gave us the word. 

The ninjas were practitioners of what we would call today "unconventional warfare," and were far more often spies than combatants, and more often other types of combatant mercenary–raiders, saboteurs, arsonists, scouts, etc.–than persons sent to carry off the death of specific individuals… i.e. assassins. And even when they did make such attempts, these weren't always the sort we associate with our favorite black-pajama-clad Hollywood images: at least two attempts on Oda Nobunaga's life were made by sharpshooters. 

Hasan-e Sabbah's sect of fanatics certainly did make use of assassination as a matter of policy–primarily as an alternative to more costly pitched battles. However, they also maintained numerous regular castles scattered around portions of the Middle East, some of which extended control over nearby areas, and the center of the movement controlled a slightly larger state in northern Persia. Hasan's own goal was principally missionary in nature; the assassinations were a means to achieving the safety (and presumably funds: apparently he was willing to hire out an occasional follower) to pursue this. So here again, the actual number of assassins relative to the whole would have been quite small. As with the ninja, the Nizari assassins were probably credited with far more acts than they actually committed; even more than the ninja, the Nizaris were quite happy to be credited even for the ones they didn't commit, as the psychological impact tended to discourage their opposition.

The Fu Manchu books, while they make great reading, should be taken with more than a few grains of salt when viewed as potential sources: Rohmer describes his titular character as "the yellow peril incarnate"–which should give you some idea where he was coming from when he started writing the series a century ago. (On the other hand, he certainly isn't demeaning in crediting Fu with numerous intellectual accomplishments: he's one of the outstanding villains in all literary history.) As for Fu's supporting cast, however… "dacoit" simply means "bandit": they were highwaymen. The thuggee were bandits who routinely killed rather than merely robbed their victims, but they'd hardly qualify as "assassins" under most uses of the word: their victims were targets of opportunity encountered on the roads, not individuals singled out for death. Whether the thuggee were religiously motivated is debatable; purportedly they were Kali worshipers, but this has been contested, and at any rate there were non-Hindu thuggee as well. (Conversely, the overwhelming majority of Kali worshipers were not thuggee.) I can't recall if Rohmer also uses "lascar" or not–I think he does: these at any rate didn't even remotely resemble assassins… they were militiamen or, more often, sailors.

So, basically, yes, assassins have generally been lone individuals with no particular training, acting out of their own motivations. There simply was never enough demand for anybody to create trained cadres–and in most cases, even a successful _trained_ assassin wouldn't survive his mission, so it wasn't exactly a great career path. The professional assassin is largely a 20th-century phenomenon, and even most assassinations in the past century have been performed by amateurs, even the bulk of those associated with organized crime.


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## SeverinR

I would think a group would have to expand out into other areas of crime, as assassinations or murder for hire,
would not be an everyday occurence. Or often enough to live off of.  And killers need secrecy to keep working/staying alive, if all you do is kill, someone will notice.  (You know every time that woman appears, someone dies? DO you think Jessica Fletcher(Angela Landsbury) is an assasin?)

More of the mafia style organized crime, rather then just a group of hit men waiting to be hired.  And why not intimidate and extort for profit, in the off time? Anyone that doesn't pay can be killed.


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