Behind the word assassin lies a rumor tangled up with drugs. In medieval Persia and Syria there was an order notorious for secretly murdering its political enemies. Their foes scornfully called them, in Arabic, the hashishin — "the hashish-eaters" — because of a rumor that they carried out their missions fearlessly while in a hallucinatory state. There is in fact little firm evidence that they used any drug at all; the name was really closer to an insult, something like calling them "junkies." Carried into Europe by way of the Crusades, the nickname shifted in pronunciation to become assassin, and settled into its meaning of "one who secretly kills."