Posted by:  Eddie Lark, Paladin

I received an interesting email today from a TFA member that is requesting a forum on the relationship between the Islamic and Templar societies. I have 'some' experience with this topic, but I haven't studied it in about four years.

After researching some of the new discoveries in books and the internet on this subject, I have regained my interest. Especially when I find that many of the Templars from the Flanders families are actually related to some of their foes. For instance Hugues de Payns (I prefer this French spelling) is related to a certain patrilineal line of Muhammadans. I have some charts, but those things are very difficult to publish.  Meaning, I have tried without much luck. But I will find another way.

Let us begin here:

Islamic Influence and the Knights Templar

For Muslims, the ultimate pre-requisite towards discussion with people of other faiths has to be mutual respect of everyone's beliefs. Muslims have always been uniquely positioned in this regard, as accepters of the validity of all prophets.

Muslims often repeat the concept of accepting Jesus, Moses, and 124,000 other Prophets, when explaining their religion to others, as it is indeed an important point to recognize when trying to understand Islam. But some might wonder, what is the real significance of the acceptance of Jesus as a Prophet, as Moses as a Prophet, and thousands of other Prophets, if Muslims believe (sometimes radically) different things about those personalities than Christians or Jews?

The answer is that acceptance of prophethood boils down to a practical reality of respect and tolerance on the part of Muslims towards people of other faiths. Christians believe Jesus was crucified and exists within a Trinity, Muslims do not. This leads to drastic differences of theology which are real and not to be ignored. But, if we agree Jesus existed, that he was a man of holy and spiritual significance, and that he brought a message from God of righteousness, we may begin to move the relationship past suspicion to one of neighborly acceptance and practical benefit.

Respect and tolerance, written right into the Islamic faotj, that is what wide acceptance of prophethood means in terms of real world interactions with those of other faiths.  In fact, this belief puts Muslims in the unique position of not only to being tolerant to other faiths, but to be the party to allow various factions and sects of each of other faiths to come together.

This experience comes to life in the case of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

When the Caliph and close companion of the Prophet Muhummad,  Umar, obtained control of Jerusalem, he refused to pray within the Church of the Holy Sepulchre as a sign of respect towards the Christians, and as a sign of fear that later generations might turn it into a mosque.  Rather, he prayed in the courtyard across from it, and eventually built a mosque there.   Not soon thereafter the Crusades began, and again in 1187,  Sultan Salidin maintained that decision and appointed Muslim families to be neutral keepers of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.  His Sultanate lasted only 57 years after his demise, but the Ottomans revived and improved on this tradition of tolerance for hundreds of years.  The wisdom they used in this regard resulted in a traditional division and acceptance of roles which are still practiced to this day.

The richness of the historical truths of the Islamic influence and the Knights Templar intertwine inexorably with the myths that have stimulated the imagination of countless minds through the centuries. Both the Assassins and Templars were destroyed as heretics some seven hundred years ago."

"The Templars and the Assassins: The Militia of Heaven"

James Wasserman

Like many other researchers and practitioners of the Western Esoteric Tradition, I too have had a long and continuous interest in the "myths" of both of these groups, not least of all since I was born in Tripoli, Lebanon, which still has a Templar Fort as a landmark. Both groups shared a very similar structure, and were said to be guardians of initiatic wisdom (Wasserman supports the idea that the Templars were transformed by an infusion of this Wisdom from the Assassins). Both groups embody intriguing archetypes: the noble group of warrior monks devoted to a higher purpose (the Templar motto was "Not for our Glory but for yours O Lord") which supposedly later degenerated into a powerful elite that snubbed political and religious authority and then was sacrificed on a funeral pyre from whose ashes many branches of the Western initiatic societies claim lineage. In the case of the Assassins it is the darker archetype of the secret society using drugs to gain recruits, and deliberately molding them for political purposes by utilizing them as agents employing the method now synonymous with their name: "assassination". According to Brocardus, a 14th-century German priest, "The Assassins...sell themselves, are thirsty for human blood, kill the innocent for a price, and care nothing for either life or salvation. Like the devil, they transfigure themselves into angels of light, by imitating the gestures, garments, languages, customs and acts of various nations and peoples; thus, hidden in sheep's clothing, they suffer death as soon as they are recognized."

There are so many unanswered mysteries surrounding both orders , it is little wonder that there is a ready public hungry for the newest addition to the voluminous literature which often glamorizes these groups or merely repeats the mythos of secret initiatic teachings and the "hidden hand" which created Freemasonry , and even international banking . A detailed overview of both groups which leads us through the labyrinthine turnings to one of the best examinations of the historical reality and context of both orders. Wasserman acknowledges the help of such eminent scholars as Peter Lamborn Wilson (also known as the delightful Hakim Bey). For the first time we have access, in English to the document "In Praise of the New Knighthood" by St Bernard of Clairvaux, who supervised the writing of the Rule of the Templars.

Details of the theory and structure of secret societies, the little understood divisions between the Sunni and Shiite sects and the sub branches of seven and twelve Imam schools are presented with the healthy mixture of scholarship and plain speaking. The Templars are shown to have been a revolt against the decadence that knighthood had become, and the Assassins are shown to have been a society of free thinkers, with a legitimate and sophisticated hierarchical system of nine degrees of initiation into Gnosis. By necessity they had to have a military wing in order to safeguard their existence due to the tyranny of local political and religious leaders. The Ismaili Nizari sect still in existence today and ruled by the Aga Khan are shown to be the descendants of the Assassins.

Curiously Wasserman points out that there is no evidence of the actual administration of the drug Hashish to any of the members and points out that the allegation was leveled against them by Sunni critics who wished to denigrate them by associating them with a practice even now associated in the Middle Eastern world with the disreputable elements of the lower class. Idries Shah has pointed out in his writings that another derivation for their name is "People of the Assas", ie "the Foundation" and infers that they were actually an arm of the Sufis whose allegorical methods were interpreted literally. Witness the common reference to wine as an intoxicant (symbolizing the inebriated state of ordinary consciousness and paradoxically its transmutation) amongst the many Sufi poets, such as Rumi and Omar Khayyam, who are claimed by the Nizaris as being members of their order.

There is a lingering romance in the popular mind with these seminal influences on Western culture generally, and esoteric orders in particular. This book will prove to be a valuable addition to the library of any serious researcher, and a good companion to revelatory texts such as John Robinson's "Born in Blood", which has presented one of the most lucid substantiations of the Templar origin of Freemasonry. Whilst many other books merely repeat the many historical details , James Wasserman has done us all a great service by allowing us to access further insights into the beliefs and relevance of these traditions. One always looks forward to such well researched and eloquently written expositions.

Lines of the Umayyad Royal House and Muhammad, Seal of the Prophets

The Flanders families are actually, divided into two memberships.  Those descended from the Judiac/Christian side and those with a Christian/Islamic descent from either the Umayyad Royal House or from Muhammad, the Seal of the Prophets. Within this last category came the de Payns family and his Order of the Knights Templar, together with the various Flanders families ruling the crusader states of Jerusalem, Edessa, Caesarea, Sidon, Tripoli, Cyprus and Outrejourdain.  The Flanders minor family is quite extensive and the Templar list of Flanders family members is quite lengthy. The families with royal connections were, among others, Bigorre, de Lara, Montdidier, Rameru, Montpellier, Toulouse, Urgel, Savoy, Provence, Brabant, Flanders, Besalu, Vermendois, Beaudement, Champagne, Poitou, Hainault, Aquitaine, Coucy, Bruce, de Braose, Gueldres, Guise, Brittany and Barcelona.  The Islamic allies of the Templars were the Idrisids of ez and the Ismaili and Nusayri heads of families descended from the sixth Imam of Islam, Ja'far s-Sadiq, a descendant of Muhammad the Prophet.  

Interestingly, St. Malachy, Celtic bishop of Down, left his vestments to Bernard de Clairveaux. The Celtic Church was of paramount importance to Abbot Bernard and this is why he behaves in the fashion of a cleric belonging to the Celtic Church rather than one belonging to the Roman persuasion. And the pope, Honorius II, radily gave in by giving Bernard the responsibility to organize the council at Troyes, without knowing quite what this council will discuss, debate and finally stamp and deliver. This is unparalleled in the history of church councils. Honorius was a follower and the successor to Callistus II, a relation of Henri of Burgandy, the ruling Count of Portugal (and so is Hugues de Payns.) Indeed, Callistus' real name was Guy of Burgandy. They do not say that blood is thicker than water and this certainly applies to various people concerned.

The Cistercian equation is one that, for some odd reason, has never been dealt upon by many religious historians. In fact, it is something they avoid doing like the plague.  Discussing the religious concepts of this order is something we must do if we are to understand the Templars, even Freemasonry, in its proper perspective.  Truth be told, ". . .to be a Templar meant to be a Cistercian and to be a Cistercian meant to be a Templar."  Moreover, it is Bernard de Clairveaux's relationship to Hugues de Payns that is the key to it all.

The knights were entitles, in the East, to employ Muslim jurists and translators. It is a fact that certainly in the Middle East, the Templars were divided equally between a Christian membership and a Muslim one. Most Templar masters were close friends to the Sultan of Cairo, and it is even claimed that Caliph Saladin himself had been invested within the Templar Order by Hugues de Tabarie in 1187. Many people have wondered at the reason for Saladin's knighthood, but this is resolved when one realizes that he was, maternally, a grandson of Hugues de Puiset, the lover of Alix of Jerusalem and a Knight Templar himself.  It may well be the reason when Saladin was besieging the Syrian city of Massiaf, the Order of the Assassins gave him a warning rather than just plunging a knife in his back. (Saladin understood the warning perfectly well, since he simply left the city.)