Old Man of the Mountain

Such was the story told by Marco Polo. Although a mere fantasy with little truth to it at all, there was an "Old Man of the Mountains", and there was a group of fanatics called the Assassins who were completely devoted to him. What, then, was the truth Before answering this question, there are a number of points worth noting about Marco Polo s account, the most important of which is the mysterious potion referred to by the explorer. 

The two men strolled along the walls of the mountain fortress silhouetted against the clear Persian sky. The year was A.D. 1092. One of the men was a personal envoy of the sultan. The host was Hasan-ibn-Sabah, the "Old Man of the Mountains". The envoy had come to demand the surrender of the fortress. There was no use in resisting, he attested, for the sultan had more than enough soldiers to capture the garrison. Surrender and he and his men would be treated with compassion resist and they would meet Allah long before their time. 

Arab sultans, princes, and prime ministers as well as many eminent Crusaders all fell victim to these daggermen. With the assassination of Conrad, marquis of Monteferrat, however, the reputation of the "Old Man of the Mountains" spread far beyond the Middle East to the far reaches of Western Europe. The fidai responsible for the murder spent six months disguised as a monk in the camp of the Crusaders, waiting for just the right opportunity. Finally, the moment came and, in full view of the marquis attendants, the assassin plunged his dagger into Conrad s body. 

Franz s encounter with his mysterious host, the underground palace, the blindfold, his initiation to hashish, the visions he experienced, and his dream-like impressions are all calculated to hold the reader s interest. They are examples of Dumas s expertise as a storyteller. And they are also examples of Dumas s subtle and masterful craftsmanship, for what the reader has actually been treated to is a rendering of Marco Polo s story of the Old Man of the Mountain and his band of Assassins. 

The Rite of Memphis always held that the real principles of masonry were Chaldean. " Their Rosicrucian ancestors had supposedly preserved this knowledge in the Temple of the Rose Cross at Damascus. The knowledge was preserved at an unknown convent of the Maronites, on Mount Liban. This probably refers to either the Assaasins and their Grand Master, the Old Man of the Mountain in a cave of Mount Lebanon. ... 

From what he himself tells of this old shaman, appear vestiges of the days when the shaman of the People of the Deer, intermediary between man, nature, and the divine was a thaumaturge who presided over fertility and the hunt. "I had to visit the same medicine man," he recounts, "when we went to the hunt. I had to prepare for him an egg, an egg to be offered to the mountain. It all depends on the value of the animal that one wants. It is as if you were going to buy an animal," he said. 

A 44-year-old man was found dead after his Cessna airplane crashed in mountainous terrain. A gas chro-matography/mass spectrometer was used to conduct stereochemical analyses of metamfetamine and amfe-tamine present in the pilot s body. At autopsy the total concentration of amphetamines in the urine was 8.0 pg/ml and the blood concentration of metamfetamine was 1.13 pg/ml, enough to produce toxic effects that could have impaired his performance. 

I have seen few such rugged and impassable stretches of country as the mountains between Salonika and Kosani. Looking down at them from the copilot s seat in our airplane, I could only wonder how military operations could be carried on at all in such terrain. There were few good roads, and the moment troops left the road it was a question of man-back or mule-back. Not even the good old reliable jeep could negotiate those mountain trails. 

Following a back-packing trip in the mountains, a 24-year-old man develops diarrhea. He acknowledges drinking stream water without purification and you suspect he is showing symptoms of giardiasis. Since you know that laboratory detection of cysts or trophozoites in the feces can be difficult, you decide to treat the patient empirically with... 

Mount Lebanon is also called the White Mountain, the Old White-headed Man, Jebel esh Shiekh or ihQ Mountain of Ice, Jebel-el-Tilj. 

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