Thamal al-Dulafi

Thamal al-Dulafi (

Fatimids in Egypt and against the Qarmatians in Iraq

Life

Thamal was a

Tarsus, Bishr al-Afshini, led the year's overland raid.^[1]^[3]

In 920, he led his fleet of 25 ships to

Fayyum Oasis, where the remaining Fatimid forces had withdrawn, and forced them to burn their equipment and retreat westwards over the desert.^[6]

Asia Minor

In 923, while Mu'nis al-Muzaffar led the land raid against the Byzantines, Thamal once more led the seaborne expedition, which allegedly made 1,000 prisoners and took much plunder, including over 28,000 animals. By this time, he had apparently already been appointed as governor of Tarsus.

al-Mas'udi, he led his fleet, augmented by Syrian and Egyptian ships, to the vicinity of Constantinople itself. There he made contact with the Bulgarians and agreed joint action in Tsar Simeon's war against the Byzantines; some of the Bulgarians even returned with Thamal to Tarsus, although nothing further is known to have come of this.^[3]^[7] However, in 924–926 he left the borderlands and went to Iraq, where he participated in the fighting against the Qarmatians. During his absence, Tarsus was governed by his lieutenant Bushra, who along with the eunuch Muflih also supervised the prisoner exchange with the Byzantines in September–October 925.^[1]^[3]

Having returned to Tarsus in late 926/early 927, he led the summer raid against the Byzantines in 927. During the campaign Thamal defeated a Byzantine army, and during his return defeated the

Ancyra, before returning to Tarsus in September/October. The women and children caught during this raid reportedly fetched 136,000 gold dinars on the slave market.^[3]^[7] In the next year his raid was successful enough that letters declaring "victories on land and on sea" were read in the Baghdad mosques.^[1]

Thamal is no longer mentioned after this,

Hamdanid period as well, as late as the mid-960s.^[9]