Muslim Egypt in most periods has sat securely at the center of the Islamic world. However, as it first emerged as a major power, beginning and especially with the amirate of Ahmad ibn Tulun (254-270/868-884), its military elite looked to other, more contested places, including the Arab-Byzantine frontier district (Thughur) of northern Syria and central Anatolia. This paper will deal with two aspects of this shift. First, it will account for Tulunid involvement in the Thughur. To emulate the success of the Aghlabids in North Africa and the Saffarids in Iran, Ibn Tulun needed to operate in a frontier zone where territories were open, at least in theory, for conquest and occupation. In other words, a vigorous dynastic state on the fringes of the crisis-ridden 'Abbasid caliphate had to be an enterprise of frontier and jihad. Second, this paper will trace the question of frontiers in Egyptian historical writing, beginning with Ibn 'Abd al-Hakam's Conquest of Egypt and the Maghrib, where Egypt appears both as a protected garden (as in the story of the wall built around it in Pharaonic times) and as the major participant in the conquest of the West. The arrival of Ibn Tulun and his foreign commanders and bureaucrats presented a challenge to the Arab-Muslim elite that had been expressing itself this way. The resulting tensions found expression in the views of historians including al-Kindi, the two authors of laudatory biographies of Ibn Tulun (Ibn al-Daya and al-Balawi), and lesser-known authors including Ibn Yunus al-Sadafi and Ibn Zulaq. Among later historians, it was Ibn Khaldun who, more than anyone else, viewed Tulunid history as a drama of the Thughur: here, as elsewhere, Ibn Khaldun saw the frontier as the crucible for the dawla, or dynastic state. The paper concludes with the views of other historians including al-Maqrizi and our hero's namesake, Shams al-Din Ibn Tulun.