Tuzun (amir al-umara)

Abu'l-Wafa Tuzun was a Turkish soldier who served first the Iranian ruler Mardavij ibn Ziyar and subsequently the Abbasid Caliphate. Rising to a position of leadership in the Abbasid army, he evicted the Hamdanid Nasir al-Dawla from Baghdad and assumed the position of amir al-umara on 31 May 943, becoming the Caliphate's de facto ruler. He held this position until his death in August 945, a few months before Baghdad, and the Abbasid Caliphate with it, came under the control of the Buyids.

Tuzun was a Turkish slave-soldier (ghulam or mamluk), who initially served the autonomous Iranian ruler Mardavij ibn Ziyar. After the assassination of Mardavij in 935, many of his soldiers left to enter service under the powerful Abbasid governor of Wasit, Ibn Ra'iq. With their support, in 936 Ibn Ra'iq managed to secure the Caliph al-Radi's invitation to take over the effective administration of what remained of the Caliphate, under the title of amir al-umara. Among Ibn Ra'iq's first actions were the disbandment of the old caliphal army, leaving his Turkish troops as one of the main power factors in the struggle for control of the Caliph and his court, a struggle that soon drew in ambitious neighbouring potentates like the Hamdanids of the Jazira and the Baridis of Basra. In this complicated struggle, Ibn Ra'iq was deposed in 938 by Bajkam, who like Tuzun had once served Mardavij and had come west with him. Ibn Ra'iq recovered his position in 941, after Bajkam's death, only to be assassinated and replaced the following year by the Hamdanid emir Nasir al-Dawla.

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