Firdous e Bareen

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Firdous e Bareen (or فردوس برین in Persian and Urdu) was the name of the garden made by Hassan-i-Sabah and his band of Nizari Ismaili Shiite fugitives (the Hashshashin) in the Elburz mountains of Northern Iran, imitating paradise or heaven. This paradise was furnished with all luxuries of life, even a rivulet of wine and was used to recruit assassins to Hassan's militia. The person to be recruited was drugged to simulate a "dying" to later have them awaken in a garden flowing with wine and served a sumptuous feast by virgins. The supplicant was then convinced he was in Heaven and that Sabbah was a minion of the divinity and that all of his orders should be followed, even to death.

The famous novel Firdous e Bareen, written by Indian Muslim novelist Abdul Halim Sherer, gives a biographical account of Hassan, a youth lured and captured by Hassan's men and then forced into his assassination machinery.

American Post-metal band Isis recorded a song called "Firdous e Bareen" on their latest album In the Absence of Truth.