but to have been warned of the unwisdom of this course. In 941,
after the death of Ibn Raiq, the Ikshid 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 Tulunids had aspired to
possess. He is said at this time to have started (in imitation of Ahmad
Ibn Tulun) a variety of vexatious enactments similar to those afterwards
associated with the name of Hakim, 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 Tuzun and was in the power of the
Hamdanids; 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 Hamdanid Saif
addaula shortly after this assumed the governorship of Aleppo, and
became involved in a struggle with the Ikshid, whose general, Kafur, he
defeated in an engagement between Homs and Hamah (Hamath). In a later
battle he was himself defeated by the Ikshid, when an arrangement was
made permitting Saif addaula to retain most of Syria, while a prefect
appointed by the Ikshid was to remain in Damascus. The Buyid ruler, who
was now supreme at Bagdad, permitted the Ikshid 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 Ikshid's son Unjur, who had been
proclaimed in his father's time, and began his government under the
tutelage of the negro Kafur. Syria was immediately overrun by Saif
addaula, but he was defeated by Kafur in two engagements, and was
compelled to recognize the overlordship of the Egyptian viceroy. At the
death of Unjur in 961 his brother Abu'l-Hasan 'Ali was made viceroy with
the caliph's consent by Kafur, who continued to govern for his chief as
before. The land was during this period threatened at once by the
Fatimites from the west; the Nubians from the south, and the Carmathians
from the east; when the second Ikshidi died in 965, Kafur at first made
a pretence of appointing his young son Ahmad 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 aforementioned Ahmad,