In the history of al-Kindi, Muhammad first appears just after the arrival of the Abbasid Revolution to Egypt in 750, when he was one of several local notables who presented themselves to the new Abbasid governor Salih ibn Ali.[2] In 767 he participated in a failed campaign to suppress a Coptic and Arab revolt at Sakha and was seriously wounded in the fighting.[3] In 771 he was temporarily placed in charge of Egypt when Abdallah departed to visit the caliph al-Mansur in Iraq.[4]