riginal word with
the greatest accuracy that Italian spelling admits. In another author we
find it as _Chazisii_ (see _Bollandists_, May, vol. ii. p. xi.); Joinville
calls them _Assacis_; whilst Nangis and others corrupt the name into
_Harsacidae_, and what not.

The explanation of the name MULEHET as it is in Ramusio, or _Mulcete_ as
it is in the G. Text (the last expressing in Rusticiano's Pisan tongue the
strongly aspirated _Mulhete_), is given by the former: "This name of
Mulehet is as much as to say in the Saracen tongue '_The Abode of
Heretics_,'" the fact being that it does represent the Arabic term
_Mulhid_, pl. _Mulahidah_, "Impii, heretici," which is in the Persian
histories (as of Rashiduddin and Wassaf) the title most commonly used to
indicate this community, and which is still applied by orthodox Mahomedans
to the Nosairis, Druses, and other sects of that kind, more or less
kindred to the Ismaili. The writer of the _Tabakat-i-Nasiri_ calls the
sectarians of Alamut _Mulahidat-ul-maut_, "Heretics of Death."[1] The
curious reading of the G. Text which we have preserved "_vaut a dire des_
Aram," should be read as we have rendered it. I conceive that Marco was
here unconsciously using one Oriental term to explain another. For it
seems possible to explain _Aram_ only as standing for _Haram_, in the
sense of "wicked" or "reprobate."

In Pauthier's Text, instead of _des aram_, we find "_veult dire en
francois_ Diex Terrien," or Terrestrial God. This may have been
substituted, in the correction of the original rough dictation, from a
perception that the first expression was unintelligible. The new phrase
does not indeed convey the meaning of _Mulahidah_, but it expresses a main
characteristic of the heretical doctrine. The correction was probably made
by Polo himself; it is certainly of very early date. For in the romance of
Bauduin de Sebourc, which I believe dates early in the 14th century, the
Caliph, on witnessing the extraordinary devotion of the followers of the
Old Man (see note 1, ch. xxiv.), exclaims:

"Par Mahon ...
Vous estes _Diex en terre_, autre coze n'i a!" (I. p. 360.)

So also Fr. Jacopo d'Aqui in the _Imago Mundi_, says of the Assassins:
"Dicitur iis quod sunt in Paradiso magno _Dei Terreni_"--expressions, no
doubt, taken in both cases from Polo's book.

Khanikoff, and before him J. R. Forster, have supposed that the name
_Mulehet_ represents _Alamut_. But the resemblance is much closer an