Jewish Warriors

Persia and Central Asia Impenetrable mountains and bottomless ravines have, from the time of the Maccabees, offered the often smaller and less well equiped Jewish armies protection and support from their enemies. Often, even making the difference between freedom and subjugation.
The mountain Jews of Arabia, coming down with the Hashashin to plague Crusaders, have already been mentioned above. Similar mountain strongholds existed throughout the Caucas mountains and through Central Asia into Tibet, with small independent Jewish mountain kingdoms, often allies with the Central Asian Nomads against the Eastern Muslim Empire. However, in contrast to the Jews of Arabia, who aided the Arabs in raids and warfare, these Central Asian Jews seem to have, generally, kept to their mountain fortresses. Rather than riding out to raid with their allies, they acted as buffers, standing fast in their impenetrable strongholds to prevent enemies from penetrating beyond their lands.
It was these mountain warriors on the borders of Persia's empire who were most stirred up by the false Messiah David Alroy. David Alroy, a Persian Jew who claimed descent from the house of King David, said that the time had come when the armies of God would ride out at the head of the armies of the Israelites to take back Jerusalem from the Persians. He appealed at once to the warrior spirit and the religious yearnings of the free mountain Jews and had a substantial amount of success developing a following. The stories of this almost Messiah blend the magic of the Biblical prophet and the epic of the warrior hero.
Finally, recognising the danger he presented, and failing to capture him, the Persian authorities threatened the slaughter of Persian Jewry if David Alroy were not stopped. In the end, David Alroy's head was presented to the King of Persia. The story goes that he was beheaded by his father in law as he slept.

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