Tughj ibn Juff

Ṭughj ibn Juff ibn Yiltakīn ibn Fūrān ibn Fūrī ibn Khāqān (died 906) was a Turkic military officer who served the Abbasid Caliphate and the autonomous Tulunid dynasty. He was the father of Muhammad al-Ikhshid, the founder of the Ikhshidid dynasty.

Life
Tughj was the son of Juff, the first member of the family to enter the service of the Abbasid Caliphate under Caliph al-Mu'tasim (reigned 833–842). The family hailed from the Farghana Valley—they later claimed princely roots—and were recruited by al-Mu'tasim along with many other inhabitants of Ferghana into his army (the Faraghina regiment). Juff and his descendants therefore were not members of the military slave caste (mamlūks or ghilmān), but a freeborn, likely even noble-born, man. Like his father, Tughj served the Abbasids, but later entered the service of the Tulunids, who since 868 had become autonomous rulers of Egypt and Syria. Tughj had also brothers, Badr and Wazar, who also entered military service, but they are only occasionally mentioned and little is known about them.

According to al-Tabari, in August 892 Tughj led a summer raid (ṣāʿifa) against the Byzantine Empire on behalf of the Tulunids. He raided the environs of Tyraion (Ar. Ṭarāyūn) and a place called in Arabic Malūriyah (possibly Malakopea or Balboura). He later became governor of Tiberias, Aleppo (the capital of the district of Qinnasrin) and Damascus, and particularly distinguished himself by repelling the Qarmatian attack on Damascus in 903.

After the death of the second Tulunid emir Khumarawayh in 896, however, the Tulunid state quickly began crumbling from within, and failed to put up any serious resistance when the Abbasids moved to re-establish direct control over Syria and Egypt in 905. Tughj defected to the invading Abbasids under Muhammad ibn Sulayman, and was named governor of Aleppo in return; but Ibn Sulayman himself fell victim to court intrigues soon after, and Tughj along with his sons Muhammad and Ubayd Allah were imprisoned in Baghdad. Tughj died in prison in 906, but his sons were freed shortly after. After a tumultuous career, Muhammad would go on to establish himself as the master of Egypt in 935, and ruled the country and parts of Syria until his death in July 946. The dynasty he established, the Ikhshidids, lasted until Egypt was overrun by the Fatimids in 969.