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Rh interruption for centuries to come. Syria throughout this long period went with Egypt, as it did in Pharaonic days. The old connection, severed about a thousand years before, was thus re-established. The land of the Nile profited by the change, at least to the extent of having its entire revenue spent within its territory, but the position of its Syrian adjunct was not improved.

A typical military dictator, Ahmad ruled with an iron hand. He built a powerful military machine on which he depended for the maintenance of his throne. Its core was a bodyguard of 24,000 Turkish and 40,000 Negro slaves from each one of whom he exacted an oath of allegiance. As if to justify his usurpation of power in the eyes of his subjects, he launched a programme of public works that had no parallel since Pharaonic days. He adorned his capital al- Fustat (Old Cairo) with magnificent buildings, including a hospital and a mosque which still bears his name. In Syria he fortified Acre and established a naval base there. So strong was the tower that topped its double wall that three centuries later it thwarted for almost two years the com- bined efforts of two Crusading monarchs and in 1799 it proved impregnable against the assaults of Napoleon's field artillery.

Ahmad was succeeded in 884 by his extravagant and dissolute twenty-year-old son Khumarawayh, who erected a splendid palace with a garden rich in exotic tr£es, an aviary and a zoological enclosure. Under him the Tulunid domain extended from Cyrenaica to the Tigris. The caliph al-Mutadid in 892 confirmed Khumarawayh and his heirs in the possession of this vast territory for thirty years in return for an annual tribute of 300,000 dinars. Khumara- wayh' s extravagance, including a fabulous dowry for a daughter who married al-Mutadid, left the treasury empty. He was murdered by his own slaves (895) and was succeeded by two sons in turn.

Their turbulent reigns were rendered more turbulent by Rh