What's up with the women in Masyaf castle garden?

[Motor]

I never really paid attention to this before, but on my recent play through, I just now noticed how the Masyaf garden at the back of the castle is full of attractive-looking women and no one else. This made me wonder what is the purpose of the garden and the women in it? Are they meant to provide "pleasure" to keep the Assassins loyal and devout to Al Mualim? Or are the women Al Mualim's personal harem, meant for him and only him?

It's worth mentioning that the very first scene in the game is us experiencing a distorted memory of Altair, being in the garden, surrounded by those beautiful women (although faceless), who are pilling on to him as if they desired to provide pleasure to him (would make sense, seeing as he was Al Mualim's favorite).

I wonder how does such a practice fall in line with the Assassin's ideology. In all other games, we see that those who join the brotherhood, typically do it because they resonate with the ideology and beliefs of the Assassins and not because they expect rewards and pleasures in return.

What do you all think?

[MTP1981]

If I remember right, Assassin's Creed is loosely based on the real assassins who once lived in the Masyaf Castle, Syria. Wikipedia has a long article about them, and there's one particular section that says:

"The tales of the fida'is' training collected from anti-Ismaili historians and orientalist writers were compounded and compiled in Marco Polo's account, in which he described a "secret garden of paradise". After being drugged, the Ismaili devotees were said to be taken to a paradise-like garden filled with attractive young maidens and beautiful plants in which these fida'is would awaken. Here, they were told by an "old" man that they were witnessing their place in Paradise and that should they wish to return to this garden permanently, they must serve the Assassins cause. So went the tale of the "Old Man in the Mountain", assembled by Marco Polo and accepted by Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall, an 18th-century Austrian orientalist writer responsible for much of the spread of this legend. Until the 1930s, von Hammer's retelling of the Assassin legends served as the standard account of the Assassins across Europe."

Perhaps those women in the Masyaf garden are a reference to this old story/legend (?)