Mystery Babylon Guide

Mystery Babylon Episode 11: The Assassins and The Templars | Summary & Sources

Episode number MB11 (Part 11 of 42)
Original air date March 2, 1993
Broadcast Hour of the Time, WWCR shortwave
Chapter title The Templars and the Assassins
Primary text read on air A History of Secret Societies by Arkon Daraul (1961)
Listen Stream the series on archive.org

Episode Summary

medieval fortress gate with portcullis — Mystery Babylon episode 11 archival illustration

Episode 11 of the Mystery Babylon series aired on WWCR shortwave on March 2, 1993, six days after the World Trade Center bombing. Cooper opens the broadcast with that event, telling listeners he had predicted major terrorist attacks on New York since 1989 and presenting the bombing as confirmation of his forecasts. He also predicts that American troops will soon be sent to Yugoslavia. These opening remarks are Cooper’s own commentary; the body of the episode is a long reading from Arkon Daraul’s 1961 book A History of Secret Societies, with frequent interjections.

The first half completes the Assassin history begun in episode 10. Daraul’s narrative, as Cooper reads it, follows the succession of Grand Masters at Alamut. In 1163 Hasan II summoned the Ismailis below the fortress, announced that the bonds of religion were loosed, and declared himself the Hidden Imam. Cooper breaks in to connect the announcement to a phrase that would surface centuries later: the whole of the Law shall be, do as thou wilt. The reading continues through Mohammed II, who ruled for thirty-five years and intimidated the scholar Imam Razi into silence; Sinan, the Syrian chief who stood on a rock from sunrise to sunset in a hair shirt and was reportedly never seen to eat, drink, or sleep; the truce with Saladin after repeated assassination attempts and a 1176 invasion of Assassin territory; Jalaludin, who reversed course, adopted public orthodoxy, and died in 1203; and the boy leader Alaeddin, whom Cooper links to the Aladdin of the Arabian Nights tales.

The Mongol invasions broke Assassin power in Persia, but Daraul’s text argues, and Cooper emphatically agrees, that the cult never died. The Mamluk sultan of Egypt restored Alamut in 1260 and used the sect as an instrument of Egyptian policy, which Cooper glosses as a new initiation into the ancient Egyptian Mysteries of Babylon. The survival trail then runs through an eighteenth-century British consul at Aleppo, an 1810 report by the French consul on the divine status accorded to Shah Khalilullah, and the 1866 Bombay court case in which Sir Joseph Arnold ruled that the Aga Khan descended from the fourth Grand Master of Alamut and that the Khoja community belonged to the ancient sect.

After the break Cooper turns to the Knights Templar. He prefaces the reading with his own claim that a mysterious order called the Prieure de Sion appeared on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem in 1110 and recruited nine knights to search the passages beneath for relics. Daraul’s text then gives the conventional founding story: nine knights in 1118, vows of poverty and chastity, quarters on the site of the Temple of Solomon, the patronage of King Baldwin II, approval at the Council of Troyes on January 31, 1128, the plain white mantle assigned by Pope Honorius, and the red cross added by Pope Eugenius III in 1146. Gifts and recruits followed, including the 1133 will of King Alfonso of Aragon and Navarre leaving his kingdom to the order.

Cooper’s interjections carry the episode’s thesis. He asserts that the Templars were never a genuinely Christian order but a branch of the Babylonian mystery religion wearing a Christian disguise, that they were the first international bankers, and that their black and white Beauseant banner encoded the androgynous god, a symbol he says survives on the checkered floors of Masonic lodges. He dates the beginning of the modern age to 1110 and tells listeners that everything happening today traces to the Templar door. The reading closes with the contested questions: the alliance with the Assassins in the 1129 attempt on Damascus, the orientalist von Hammer’s judgment that the Ismailis were the original and the Templars the copy, the three thousand gold pieces paid by the Syrian Assassins to the Templars, which Cooper insists was a secret allowance rather than tribute, and the 1153 siege of Ascalon, where the Templar Master claimed the right to enter the breach first and his knights died in it. Cooper also dismisses the historian Keightley’s defense of the order by asserting that Keightley was himself a Templar. The episode ends with Cooper promising to connect these medieval events directly to the present, which episode 12 takes up with the destruction of the order in 1307.

Key Claims Made in This Episode

  • Cooper claims the Knights Templar were founded not as a Christian order but as a branch of the ancient Mystery Religion of Babylon.
  • Cooper claims a secret order called the Prieure de Sion appeared on the Temple Mount in 1110 and commissioned the nine founding knights of the Templar order.
  • Cooper claims the Templars were the first international bankers in world history.
  • Cooper claims the Templars copied their structure and degrees of initiation from the Assassins, citing von Hammer’s verdict that the Ismailis were the original and the Templars the copy.
  • Cooper claims the three thousand gold pieces paid by the Syrian Assassins to the Templars was a secret allowance from a larger organization to a smaller one, not tribute.
  • Cooper claims the black and white Beauseant banner secretly symbolized the androgynous god and survives in the checkered floors of Masonic temples.
  • Cooper claims the Assassin cult never died out, surviving underground and resurfacing in the 1866 Aga Khan court case in Bombay.
  • Cooper claims the Templars brought the Babylonian mystery religion back into Europe, and that Stonehenge was an ancient Babylonian temple of the sun.
  • Cooper claims he predicted the February 1993 World Trade Center bombing as far back as 1989.

Primary Sources Cited in This Episode

Source Status Where to find it
A History of Secret Societies, Arkon Daraul (1961) Not public domain; quoted on air at length, treated here under quotation only Library copies; see our sources hub
The History of the Assassins, Joseph von Hammer (1835 English translation) Public domain Search archive.org scans
Secret Societies of the Middle Ages, Thomas Keightley (1837) Public domain Search archive.org scans
History of the Arabs, Philip Hitti (1951 edition, cited via Daraul) Not public domain; reference only Library copies

Notable Quotes

They were the first international bankers. The first that ever existed in the world.

Cooper, MB11, March 2, 1993

Everything that’s happening today can be traced right to the door of the Knights Templar, and that’s why I say that.

Cooper, MB11, March 2, 1993

Historians’ View

Mainstream scholarship diverges from this episode on several points. Academic historians date the Templar founding to about 1119 as a Catholic military order and find no documented institutional descent from the Assassins beyond diplomacy and tribute arrangements. The Prieure de Sion story traces to documents fabricated in France in the 1950s, four decades after the events Cooper describes and roughly 850 years after the date he assigns them. Stonehenge predates the city of Babylon and is not regarded by archaeologists as Babylonian. Daraul’s book is considered popular rather than academic history. We document Cooper’s claims here; we do not endorse them.

Templar seal: two knights on one horse — Mystery Babylon episode 11 archival illustration

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Mystery Babylon episode 11 about?

The first half finishes the history of the Assassins of Alamut, from Hasan II in 1163 to the 1866 Aga Khan court case. The second half introduces the Knights Templar, whom Cooper presents as a copy of the Assassins and a carrier of the Babylonian mystery religion into Europe.

When did episode 11 first air?

March 2, 1993, on the Hour of the Time over WWCR shortwave radio. It was the eleventh installment of the 42-part series.

What book does Cooper read from in episode 11?

Nearly the entire episode is read from A History of Secret Societies by Arkon Daraul (1961), with Cooper’s commentary inserted throughout. He also references von Hammer and Keightley, both nineteenth-century historians of the period.

Where can I listen to episode 11?

The series is preserved on archive.org. We never host or distribute the audio ourselves; see our content policy.

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