Muhammad ibn Tughj arrived in Fustat in July 935 after obtaining support from the tax inspector al-Fadl ibn Ja'far Ibn al-Furat. His appointment combined responsibility for prayer and taxation, allowing him to exercise authority more broadly than governors had done since the fall of the Tulunids. He had been charged with protecting the western flank of the Abbasid Caliphate from an expected Fatimid attack, but he was also granted the right to form an autonomous principality.

Ibn Tughj’s background linked him to the military institutions of the Abbasid age: he was the grandson of a Turkish soldier in the Samarra guard and the son of a former governor of Damascus. In 939 he requested and received the title al-Ikhshid, a princely title associated with Ferghana. His early government faced Berber occupation of Rawda Island and a Fatimid attack, which his forces defeated in 936.

He regarded Syria as an essential part of his principality and contested it with military chiefs displaced from Mesopotamia. After uncertain engagements with Ibn Ra'ik, a matrimonial alliance divided Syria between them, with ibn Tughj receiving the south. He died in 945 after agreeing to make peace with the Hamdanid ruler of Aleppo, leaving his successors to continue the struggle over the region.