26
323–58/935–69
Egypt and southern Syria
|
⊘ 323/935 |
Muḥammad b. Ṭughj, Abū Bakr al-Ikhshīd |
|
⊘ 334/946 |
Ūnūjūr (? On Uyghur) b. Muḥammad, Abu ’1-Qāsim |
|
⊘ 349/961 |
‘Alī b. Muḥammad, Abu ’l-Hasan |
|
⊘ 355/966 |
Kāfūr al-Lābī, Abu ’l-Misk, originally regent for ‘Alī, then sole ruler until his death in 357/968 |
|
⊘ 357/968 |
Aḥmad b. ‘Alī, Abu ’l-Fawaris, d. 371/981 |
|
358/969 |
Conquest of Egypt by the Fāṭimid general fawhar |
Muḥammad b. Ṭughj came of a Turkish military family which had already been in the service of the ‘Abbāsids for two generations. He was appointed governor of Egypt in 323/935 and remained a faithful vassal of the caliphs. He also secured from al-Rādī (see above, no. 3, 1) the title of al-Ikhshīd. The Arabic sources are unclear about the meaning of this title, but it is obvious that Muḥammad b. Ṭughj knew that it was a title of honour in the Central Asian homeland of his forefathers (it is in fact an Iranian title meaning ‘prince, ruler’, and had been borne by the local Iranian rulers of Soghdia and Farghāna). Muḥammad b. Ṭughj defended himself against the caliph’s Amīr al-Umarā’ or Commander-in-Chief, Muḥammad b. Rā’iq, and against the Hamdānids in Syria (see below, no. 35, 2), holding on to Damascus. The two sons who succeeded him were, however, mere puppets, and real power in the state passed to Muhammad b. Tughj’s Nubian slave Kāfūr [kāfūr= ‘camphor’, a reference by antiphrasis to his black colour), whom he appointed regent for his sons just before he died.
On ‘Alī’s death in 355/956, Kāfūr became unrestricted ruler. To him belongs the credit for holding up the threatened Fāṭimid advance along the North African coast (see below, no. 27) and for containing the Hamdānids in northern Syria. It was only after his death that a weak and ephemeral grandson of Muhammad b. Ṭughj was installed in Fustāt, to go down almost immediately before the Fātimid invasion, this time successful. Kāfūr was famed as a liberal patron of literature and the arts, and it was at his court that the poet al-Mutanabbī spent some time.
Lane-Poole, 69; Zambaur, 93; Album, 20.
EI1 ‘lkhshīdids’ (C. H. Becker); EI2 ‘Kāfūr1 (A. S. Ehrenkreutz), ‘Muhammad b. Ṭughdi’ (J. L. Bacharach).
P. Balog, ‘Tables de reference des monnaies ikhchidites’, Revue Beige de Numismatique, 103 (1957), 107–34.
J. L. Bacharach, ‘The career of Muhammad b. Ṭughj al-Ikhshīd, a tenth-century governor of Egypt’, Speculum, 50 (1975), 586–612.