caliph sent a powerful army to assist his viceroy, and the invaders were driven out of the country and pursued as far as Barca; the Fāṭimite caliph, however, continued to maintain active propaganda in Egypt. In 919 Alexandria was again seized by the Mahdi’s son, afterwards the caliph al-Qāʽim, and while his forces advanced northward as far as Ushmunain (Eshmunain) he was reinforced by a fleet which arrived at Alexandria. This fleet was destroyed by a far smaller one sent by the Bagdad caliph to Rosetta; but Egypt was not freed from the invaders till the year 921, when reinforcements had been repeatedly sent from Bagdad to deal with them. The extortions necessitated by these wars for the maintenance of armies and the incompetence of the viceroys brought Egypt at this time into a miserable condition; and the numerous political crises at Bagdad prevented for a time any serious measures being taken to improve it. After a struggle between various pretenders to the viceroyalty, in which some pitched battles were fought, Mahommed b. Ṭughj, son of a Ṭūlūnid prefect of Damascus, was sent by the caliph to restore order; he had to force his entrance into the country by an engagement with one of the pretenders, Ibn Kaighlagh, in which he was victorious, and entered Fostat in August 935.
Mahommed b. Ṭughj was the founder of the Ikshīdī dynasty, so called from the title Ikshīd, conferred on him at his request by the caliph shortly after his appointment to the governorship of Egypt; it is said to have had the sense of “king” in Ferghana, whence this person’s Ikshidite Dynasty. ancestors had come to enter the service of the caliph Motaṣim. He had himself served under the governor of Egypt, Takīn, whose son he displaced, in various capacities, and had afterwards held various governorships in Syria. One of the historians represents his appointment to Egypt as effected by bribery and even forgery. He united in his person the offices of governor and minister of finance, which had been separate since the time of the Ṭūlūnids. He endeavoured to replenish the treasury not only by extreme economy, but by inflicting fines on a vast scale on persons who had held offices under his predecessor and others who had rendered themselves suspect. The disaffected in Egypt kept up communications with the Fāṭimites, against whom the Ikshīd collected a vast army, which, however, had first to be employed in resisting an invasion of Egypt threatened by Ibn Rāiq, an adventurer who had seized Syria; after an indecisive engagement at Lajūn the Ikshīd decided to make peace with Ibn Rāiq, undertaking to pay him tribute. The favour afterwards shown to Ibn Rāiq at Bagdad nearly threw the Ikshīd into the arms of the Fāṭimite caliph, with whom he carried on a friendly correspondence, one letter of which is preserved. He is even said to have given orders to substitute the name of the Fāṭimite caliph for that of the Abbasid in public prayer, but to have been warned of the unwisdom of this course. In 941, after the death of Ibn Rāiq, the Ikshīd took the opportunity of invading Syria, which the caliph permitted him to hold with the addition of the sacred cities of Mecca and Medina, which the Ṭūlūnids had aspired to possess. He is said at this time to have started (in imitation of Aḥmad Ibn Ṭūlūn) a variety of vexatious enactments similar to those afterwards associated with the name of Hākim, e.g. compelling his soldiers to dye their hair, and adding to their pay for the purpose.
In the year 944 he was summoned to Mesopotamia to assist the caliph, who had been driven from Bagdad by Tūzūn and was in the power of the Ḥamdānids; and he proposed, though unsuccessfully, to take the caliph with him to Egypt. At this time he obtained hereditary rights for his family in the government of that country and Syria. The Ḥamdānid Saif addaula shortly after this assumed the governorship of Aleppo, and became involved in a struggle with the Ikshīd, whose general, Kāfūr, he defeated in an engagement between Homs and Hamah (Hamath). In a later battle he was himself defeated by the Ikshīd, when an arrangement was made permitting Saif addaula to retain most of Syria, while a prefect appointed by the Ikshīd was to remain in Damascus. The Buyid ruler, who was now supreme at Bagdad, permitted the Ikshīd to remain in possession of his viceroyalty, but shortly after receiving this confirmation he died at Damascus in 946.
The second of this dynasty was the Ikshīd’s son Ūnjūr, who had been proclaimed in his father’s time, and began his government under the tutelage of the negro Kāfūr. Syria was immediately overrun by Saif addaula, but he was defeated by Kāfūr in two engagements, and was compelled to recognize the overlordship of the Egyptian viceroy. At the death of Ūnjūr in 961 his brother Abu’l-Ḥasan ʽAlī was made viceroy with the caliph’s consent by Kāfūr, who continued to govern for his chief as before. The land was during this period threatened at once by the Fāṭimites from the west; the Nubians from the south, and the Carmathians from the east; when the second Ikshīdī died in 965, Kāfūr at first made a pretence of appointing his young son Aḥmad as his successor, but deemed it safer to assume the viceroyalty himself, setting an example which in Mameluke times was often followed. He occupied the post little more than three years, and on his death in 968 the afore-mentioned Aḥmad, called Abu’l-Fawāris, was appointed successor, under the tutelage of a vizier named Ibn Furāt, who had long served under the Ikshīdīs. The accession of this prince was followed by an incursion of the Carmathians into Syria, before whom the Ikshīdī governor fled into Egypt, where he had for a time to undertake the management of affairs, and arrested Ibn Furāt, who had proved himself incompetent.
The administration of Ibn Furāt was fatal to the Ikshīdīs and momentous for Egypt, since a Jewish convert, Jacob, son of Killis, who had been in the Ikshīd’s service, and was ill-treated by Ibn Furāt, fled to the Fāṭimite sovereign, and persuaded him that the time for invading Egypt with a prospect of success had arrived, since there was no one in Fostat capable of organizing a plan of defence, and the dissensions between the Buyids at Bagdad rendered it improbable that any succour would arrive from that quarter. The Fāṭimite caliph Moʽizz li-dīn allāh was also in correspondence with other residents in Egypt, where the Alid party from the beginning of Abbasid times had always had many supporters; and the danger from the Carmathians rendered the presence of a strong government necessary. The Fāṭimite general Jauhar (variously represented as of Greek, Slav and Sicilian origin), who enjoyed the complete confidence of the Fāṭimite sovereign, was placed at the head of an army of 100,000 men—if Oriental numbers are to be trusted—and started from Rakkāda at the beginning of March 969 with the view of seizing Egypt.
Before his arrival the administration of affairs had again been committed to Ibn Furāt, who, on hearing of the threatened invasion, at first proposed to treat with Jauhar for the peaceful surrender of the country; but though at first there was a prospect of this being carried out, the majority of the troops at Fostat preferred to make some resistance, and an advance was made to meet Jauhar in the neighbourhood of Giza. He had little difficulty in defeating the Egyptian army, and on the 6th of July 969 entered Fostat at the head of his forces. The name of Moʽizz was immediately introduced into public prayer, and coins were struck in his name. The Ikshīdī governor of Damascus, a cousin of Abu’l-Fawāris Aḥmad, endeavoured to save Syria, but was defeated at Ramleh by a general sent by Jauhar and taken prisoner. Thus the Ikshīdī Dynasty came to an end, and Egypt was transferred from the Eastern to the Western caliphate, of which it furnished the metropolis.
(4) The Fāṭimite period begins with the taking of Fostat by Jauhar, who immediately began the building of a new city, al-Kāhira or Cairo, to furnish quarters for the army which he had brought. A palace for the caliph and a mosque for the army were immediately constructed, the latter still famous as al-Azhar, and for many centuries the centre of Moslem learning. Almost immediately after the conquest of Egypt, Jauhar found himself engaged in a struggle with the Carmathians (q.v.), whom the Ikshīdī prefect of Damascus had pacified by a promise of tribute; this promise was of course not held binding by the Fāṭimite general (Jaʽfar b. Falāh) by whom Damascus was taken, and the Carmathian leader al-Ḥasan b. Aḥmad al-A’ṣam received
