The first crisis of Odo’s leadership involved a mysterious splinter Shi’ite sect called the Assassins, whose members practiced the art of spectacular public murder. The Assassins’ headquarters were at Alamut Castle in Persia, but from the 1130s they also held pockets of territory in the mountains of Syria and occupied a number of castles between the county of Tripoli and principality of Antioch, high in the Nosairi Mountains.
