Kafur never repeated the military enterprise or success of his two earlier expeditions, his defeat of the Hamdanid and his repulse of the Fatimid, if indeed this latter can be regarded as a success. He was unable to prevent the Qarmatians who had raided Syria in 352, from capturing the caravan of Egyptian pilgrims on their way to Mecca in 355. Nor could he restrain a Nubian invasion into Egypt which plundered the more southern districts and took home much booty. Still more serious misfortunes which were not under his control were the two low Niles, producing famine and misery, and a severe fire which destroyed parts of Fustat, as well as an earthquake. On the whole the four years of Kafur’s rule were a period of distress and discontent.
Yet many in after days looked back to those years as a kind of golden age. It was a period in which the later growth of Arabic literature was in full tide, that later literature which contrasted with the ancient Arabic poetry of the more strictly classical period, when both prose and poetry were manipulated mainly by men who were not Arabs by race, but obtained a greater technical skill than the earlier writers had achieved. To that later literature the negro ruler of Egypt showed himself a generous patron and his court was filled with poets, wits, and men of letters who were attracted to Egypt by the liberality of the black Maecenas. Like most of his race he was passionately fond of music; and the beautiful gardens which he laid out on the north of Fustat, gardens which the Fatimids incorporated in their royal city of Cairo, transmitted his name to succeeding generations. He was lavish in his expenditure,—the negro is always ostentatious,—and especially so on the daily provisions of his kitchen, but this was counted in his favour, for the Arabic tradition was that princes should dispense an open handed hospitality, and the Egyptians of ancient and modern times have had a strong inclination to appreciate feasting and the indulgence of the appetite. But most welcome of all to his table were poets and epigrammists, who rarely went away without some substantial rewards for their literary efforts. One poet was able to leave behind him a hundred suits of robes of honour, twice that number of vests, and five hundred turbans. Such literary courtiers naturally turned their genius to complimentary verses about their patron. One, playing upon his name Kafur or “camphro,” composed verses on the fragrant scented gardens which he had laid out, and which long stood for the ideal gardens in the Egyptian mind: another explained in verse how the shocks of earthquake had been caused by the Egyptians dancing for delight as they contemplated Kafur’s merits, an effusion which caused the delighted Ustad to throw him a purse containing a thousand dinars. Amongst his pensioners was the poet al-Mutanabbi, who had left the court of the Hamdanid Sayf ad-Dawla in anger at the smallness of his presents, and thought little of a prince who did not come up to his very high standard of generosity. At first Kafur used to smile graciously at him, but the poet wanted presents and not mere compliments. “When I went into Kafur’s presence,” he said, “with the intention of reciting verses to him, he always laughed at seeing me and smiled in my face, but when I repeated to him these lines:—
‘Since friendship has become a mere deception, I am repaid for my smiles with smiles; but when I choose a friend my mind misgives me, for I know he is but a man’:
he never did so again as long as I remained with him. I was astonished at this proof of his sagacity and intelligence.” He was very quickly dissatisfied with Kafur. “What I want,” he said, “I declare not; thou art gifted with sagacity, and my silence is a sufficient explanation, nay a plain request.” At length he left Kafur’s court, dissatisfied at the liberal gifts he received because they were not ample enough, and revenged himself by writing satires on Kafur, such as:—
“Who could teach noble sentiments to this castrated negro?—his white masters?—or his ancestors who were hunted like wild beasts?”
The poet finally settled at the court of Adud ad-Dawla at Shiraz (Ibn Khall. ii. 524, sqq.).
But Kafur, though easy going and with many of the weaknesses of the negro, was a man who had the wit to acquire more than a superficial education by the right use of opportunities which were often available to the ambitious slave, and which indeed form one of the redeeming features of slavery as it existed in Muslim lands. Besides this he was a painstaking and efficient administrator, and a man of deep religious convictions.
In all Kafur ruled the country twenty-two years, part of the time as tutor to the two sons of the Ikhshih, part as independent viceroy in all but name. During the closing years of this period he became unpopular. Feeling had been strained by the famine due to the bad Niles, and the reports of the Qarmatians’ advance into Syria bred disaffection amongst the Turkish and Greek mercenaries. On Tuesday, the 20th Jumada I. 356 (May, 967), he died at the age of sixty, leaving property to the value of 700,000 dinars of gold, and goods, furniture, jewels, slaves, and animals valued at some 600,000 dinars.
Kafur’s death left Egypt in a state of confusion. The court assembled to elect a governor; a significant mark of the times, for no reference was made to the Khalif at Baghdad, who was a mere phantom. The choice fell on Abu l-Fawaris Ahmad, grandson of the Ikhshih Muhammad b. Tughj, who was a mere child. Soon after this, however, there arrived in Egypt Husayn, the son of ʿAbdullah, the brother whom Muhammad had left in Syria in 321. During the thirty years which had elapsed since then ʿUbayd and his son had had a chequered military career, and the son now arrived as a fugitive, fleeing from the Qarmatians. His arrival was welcome to the Turkish troops who forthwith elected him their general, and he at once assumed the supreme power. The use he made of this authority was to arrest the wazir Ibn al-Furat and torture him until he wrung from him a large sum of money with which he departed at once to Syria. During his brief stay in Egypt he had been guilty of other acts of cruelty and rapacity, and when a year later he was himself sent a prisoner to Egypt, there was a general feeling of satisfaction that he was himself treated with severity. His departure for Syria took place on the first of Rabiʿ II. 358 (Feb., 969). The rule of the Ikhshids, or at least their nominal authority, continued for five months more until the summer of the same year (Ibn Khall, Life of Tughj).
It was a time of acute disorder. Famine had followed the failure of the Nile, and plague had followed the famine. The soldiers had their pay diminished, their customary gratuities were in arrear, and they were in open mutiny, for there was no controlling hand to restrain them. The administration was in the hands of the wazir Ibn al-Furat, who had been plundered by ʿAbdullah, and he was unable either to pay the troops or to relieve the distress of the people. It was clear that under these conditions the country would be in no condition to offer effective resistance to an invader, and this was the moment chosen by the Fatimid Khalif to make his attack.