Yusuf Tazim (c. 1467-1512) was the Mentor of the Ottoman Brotherhood of Assassins from 1511 until his death in 1512.
Biography[]
Yusuf Tazim was a Turk born in Bursa around 1467, but was raised in Constantinople from the age of eight by his mother. His father was an Assassin, and presumably that was how Yusuf became one too. But there was no guess as to what happened to Tazim's father, with some theories including being killed or deserting the family.
By the time he was 17, Yusuf was well known around the city as a rabble rouser and a petty thief. But a chance meeting with the legendary Vizier Ishak Pasha changed all of that. Ishak was an Assassin too, operating in the Sublime Porte right under Bayezid II's nose. It was Ishak who had defeated Vlad the Impaler, and later brokered the tentative truce between Ottomans and Assassins. By the late 1480s, he was busy recruiting open-minded citizens of the Empire to his Order's cause. Yusuf was taken with Ishak's charisma and easy manner of leading, and so joined the Assassins just before his 20th birthday.
From there, Yusuf's rise was swift and assured, and by 1500 he had made quite a name for himself. In 1502, Yusuf met with a contingent of Venetian Assassins in Greece in a joint effort to steer the Ottoman-Venetian War to a peaceful end. These efforts appear to have paid off, for in 1503 the fighting stopped, ushering in a brief era of peace on the Ottoman Empire's western border.
Perhaps made complacent by the Assassins' successes in keeping the peace, Sultan Bayezid II grew soft in his final decade, preferring his mystical textes and alchemical experiments to governing. This suited the Assassins just fine, for a dull peace was preferable to endless war and Imperial expansion. But, following the earthquake in 1509, a new threat appeared in Constantinople - Templars fighting under the old Byzantine crest. Stirring from years of relative calm, Yusuf once again roused his Assassins to begin the long and difficult fight ahead.
Yusuf assassinates a conspirator at Topkapi Palace
In 1511, Yusuf Tazim made the acquaintance of Italian Mentor Ezio Auditore da Firenze, showing him around Constantinople and teaching him about the hookblade. They also held off attacks on the Grand Bazaar and Galatia dens, using riflemen, crossbowmen, leaders, barricades, and cannon salvos tactically to win the battles with the Byzantines.
He assisted Ezio in finding the first Masyaf key, and he also aided him in saving the life of Prince Suleiman the Magnificent. Dressed as a ministrel, he killed two conspirators, while Ezio (also dressed as an entertainer) played the lute for the two separate crowds of people. He also helped to save Suleiman from rogue Janissaries at the banquet who tried to attack him, assisted by Ezio.
Later, Yusuf Tazim assisted Ezio in escaping Constantinople by destroying the Great Chain and the Ottoman Navy guarding it, with the aid of bomb-maker and surveyor Piri Reis, an associate of the Assassins. While Ezio was gone, he led the Assassins Order in the city again.
Death[]
Yusuf was told to defend Ezio's friened Sofia Sartor by Ezio before he left, and he stood guard at her book shop. However, Shehzade Ahmet ordered the Janissaries to storm the bookshop and find Sofia, believing that she heard of the Masyaf Keys and what Ezio had been up to all along. Yusuf was stabbed in the back with a knife, and when Ezio arrived at the shop to hopefully find Sofia, he found the bodies of Yusuf and many guards. He shut Yusuf's eyes and laid him to rest, and set out to kill Ahmet.