With several assassination attempts on Donald Trump occurring in the last few months (September 2024) it’s worth examining the history of assassination and the origin of the word.
Assassination means killing leaders and notable figures for political gain. This political gain may include to seize power, spark revolution, draw attention to a cause, seek revenge, or to weaken a regime or its critics.
Such politically motivated murder has taken place in nearly all cultures and in every period of history. However, most European cultures have been quite reluctant to put a word to it.
The earliest assassination in history
The earliest recorded assassination (according to The Guinness Book Of Records) was against the Pharaoh of the Middle Kingdom of Egypt, Amenemhat I, 5 March 1910 BC. He is thought to have been assassinated as a result of a palace conspiracy by his own bodyguard.
Evidence from the past
However, another contender, based on archaeological findings from the central Thuringia region of Germany, is the Prince of Helmsdorf. The prince had been elaborately buried with his weapons in about 1940 BC. Despite the dignified burial his bones show evidence of severe injuries probably made with a sharp dagger into his stomach, spine, and collarbone. The injuries suggest he was unsuspecting and surprised by the attack, perhaps a relative, friend or bodyguard. A specialist archaeologist suggested the injury locations were similar to those gladiators would have aimed, suggesting it was someone trained in the use of weapons.
Et tu Brute?
Perhaps the most famous political assassination from history is that of Julius Caesar. He was killed in the Roman Forum by a group of senators led by Brutus and Cassius on the Ides of March (15 March) 44 BC. Daggers were the weapon of choice there as well. (Et tu Brute? is from Shakespeare’s play as Caesar recognises his friend Brutus is among his attackers meaning “And you to, Brutus?”).
But no word for assassination just yet
Surprisingly there were no specific words in the Latin of Caesar’s day for “assassination”. There is no classical word equivalent in Greek or Latin that related solely to the killing of people of high standing. Herodotus, the Roman historian, used the same verb for the killing of an Athenian tyrant as he did for slaughtering sacrificial animals. We do have regicide for the killing of a king but, although based on Latin, it is a relatively modern English construction from about 1600 AD.
The first assassins’ creed—Sicarii
Soon after the death of Jesus there was a movement that used assassination in ways we associate with modern political terrorism. The Sicarii was a Jewish sect associated with the Zealots that was active in the Holy Land around 66-73 AD. They targeted and assassinated Jews and Romans who collaborated with the Roman occupiers.
Josephus, a Jewish-Roman historian describes how they killed a high priest: “they had daggers under their garments, and by thus mingling themselves among the multitude they slew Jonathan”.
The sica is a curved dagger, a traditional weapon of south-east European people. The curve of the blade was to help in using the weapon around a defending shield. From sica came the Latin word sicarii for a killer or murderer.
The word sicarii appeared in 81 BC in the Roman legal system in connection with controlling crimen inter sicarios (Roman gangsterism). The modern Spanish word sicario means paid assassin.
No martyrdom from assassination
Between 872 and 894 even if you were the head of the Christian church you did not give you much protection from your rivals. During that time at least six popes were assassinated by various means including poison, being clubbed to death and smothered but most were strangled (thus, presumably, not offending God by the spilling of blood). The motivation for each of these ecclesiastical murders was little different to those of any political assassination—disagreement with their leadership decisions or their rivals seeking power.
The real assassins and their creed
The group that has given its name to political murder are the Nizārīs Ismailis. They were a breakaway sect from the Ismaili branch of Shia Islam. They occupied a string of mountain castles in Syria and Iran from the end of the 11th century until the Mongol conquests in the middle of the 13th. The Nizārīs led by Hasan ibu-al-Sabbah (also known as the Old Man of the Mountain) captured their first castle, Alamut in northern Iran in 1090.
Weaker than their adversaries in military terms, the Nizārīs relied on stealth warfare that included espionage, infiltration, and targeted killings of enemy leaders. Their enemies were other groups fighting for ascendancy in the area. They entered into European history during the Crusades when they directed their tactics at the invaders.
The first known Christian victim of the Nizārīs assassins was Raymond II, Count of Tripoli, in 1152. He was likely killed in retaliation for establishing the Knights Templar at Tartus (then called Tortosa). Conrad of Monferrat was assassinated by Nizaris days before he was to be crowned king of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1192.
In 1271, Nizārīs assassins attacked the future king of England, Edward I (also during the crusades). Edward overpowered and killed the assassin but he was wounded in the arm by a poisoned dagger and took several months to recover. He abandoned the crusade.
The word assassination
The Nizārīs were portrayed by their adversaries as fanatical followers of the Old Man of the Mountain and as hashish users. The Arabic word ḥashīshī (consumer of hashish) was used as an insult to the Nizārīs, and became the root of the English word “assassin”.
There has been much written about the Nizārīs link to hashish but ultimately there is no account of their use of hashish. It seems highly unlikely that highly trained professional killers (followers of Furusiyya, the Arabic code of chivalry, derived from “faris” for horseman) relying on stealth would have reduced their effectiveness by taking hashish.
The Arabic plural suffix “-in” was added to ḥashīshī, mistaken in Europe for part of the word. This is a similar mistake with the word Bedouin, another word picked up from the Crusades, meaning desert dwellers (badawi, from “badw” for desert camp).
The word assassin entered English in the 1530s. It had existed in the Anglo-Latin from the 1250s arriving via medieval French and Italian. The act of an assassin became the verb assassinate and the noun for the act itself, assassination in about 1600.
American assassinations
The US Republic has been compared to the Roman Republic because of the prevalence of assassinations in its politics. Four sitting presidents have been killed: Abraham Lincoln (1865, by John Wilkes Booth); James A. Garfield (1881, by Charles J. Guiteau); William McKinley (1901, by Leon Czolgosz); and John F. Kennedy (1963, by Lee Harvey Oswald).
Ronald Reagan survived an attempt in 1981 while President. Theodore Roosevelt (1912, by John Schrank) and Donald Trump (2024, by Thomas Matthew Crooks and Ryan Wesley Routh) are the only two former presidents to be injured in an assassination attempt.
The American civil rights movement had many of its people killed by the Klu Klux Klan, mobs and even the police. But the two most famous killings were the assassination of Malcolm X on 21 February 1965 and Martin Luther King Jr. on 4 April 1968. Note that all of these US assassinations and attempts used firearms.
The ethics of assassination
Assassination is a form of murder but there has been much philosophical debate about whether it can be justified by circumstance.
In the context of war why should soldiers be considered expendable and civilians considered collateral damage while the leaders who instigate the wars are morally protected from harm in that war by ideas of honour and chivalry. It has been argued that assassination of leaders may be justified in reducing the death toll of a war. How many people would be alive today had the German army officer, Claus von Stauffenberg been successful with his assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler on 20 July 1944?
We do know assassination is morally reprehensible when it is used by dictators to remove their competitors or more usually for terror (for instance Putin’s assassination of dissidents and oligarchs that have wavered in support for him). So conversely, tyrannicide, the killing the unjust ruler, has been argued to be a justifiable form of murder because the tyrant acts against the common good and their assassination aims to restore just rule.
Finally, there is no place for assassination in democracy. Leaders such as the US President are given their power by a democratic system agreed by everyone within that system. An assassin (just as a terrorist organisation) within a democratic system is acting for their own self-interest not that of the people.