As it happened, al-Muttaqi was persuaded by the emissaries of Tuzun, who protested his loyalty, to return to Iraq, only to be seized, blinded and deposed on 12 October and replaced by al-Mustakfi. Al-Mustakfi reconfirmed al-Ikhshid's governorship, but by this point it was an empty gesture. According to J. L. Bacharach, although the 13th-century historian Ibn Sa'id al-Maghribi reports that al-Ikhshid immediately took the "bay'a" and read the Friday prayer in the new caliph's name, based on the available numismatic evidence, he appears to have delayed recognition of both al-Mustakfi and his Buyid-installed successor al-Muti () for several months by refraining from including them in his coinage, in an act that was a deliberate and clear statement of his "de facto" independence from Baghdad. This independence was also acknowledged by others; the contemporary "De Ceremoniis" records that in the correspondence of the Byzantine court, the "Emir of Egypt" was accorded a golden seal worth four "solidi", the same as the caliph in Baghdad.