When King Anujur died in the flower of youth, in 349 AH, Kāfūr placed Anujur’s brother ʿAlī on the throne. ʿAlī reigned for six years, yet the reins of power were in Kāfūr’s hands. After ʿAlī’s death Kāfūr himself assumed full sovereignty and rode out clad in the caliphal black robe of investiture. The senior statesmen advised him to set up one of ʿAlī’s sons as a nominal monarch, but he pled the boy’s minority and paid no heed to anyone. He publicly claimed that the deed of investiture and the robes had come to him from the caliph al-Muṭīʿ, and this occurred in Ṣafar 355 AH—an affair over which not even two goats locked horns.

Kāfūr inspired awe: he was a shrewd ruler, forbearing, open-handed, and dignified, possessed of an intellect far above that of ordinary household slaves. Al-Mutanabbī said of him (1):
“Those who set out for Kāfūr pass by all others,
for one who seeks the ocean finds the rivulets trifling.
They have brought us the very pupil of his age’s eye,
leaving behind them only blank whiteness and tear-soaked rims.”

The poet stayed in Kāfūr’s court for four years, amassing considerable wealth, but then lampooned his patron, an act of sheer ingratitude, and fled across the desert, saying (2):
“Who taught a castrated black man nobility—
his white clansmen or his noble sires?
When even the white stallions are powerless to do fair deeds,
what, then, of the black gelding?”

The Friday pulpits of Syria, Egypt, the Two Sanctuaries, and the frontier fortresses echoed with prayers for Kāfūr. It is also said that he had a formidable grip: scarcely anyone could string his bow. He would hand the bow to a mounted warrior; if the man failed, Kāfūr laughed and made him a servant, but if he succeeded, Kāfūr scowled.