Umayyad conquest of Hispania


The Umayyad conquest of Hispania, also known as the Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula or the Umayyad conquest of the Visigothic Kingdom, was the initial expansion of the Umayyad Caliphate over Hispania from 711 to 788. The conquest resulted in the destruction of the Visigothic Kingdom and the establishment of the independent Emirate of Córdoba under Abd al-Rahman I, who completed the unification of the Muslim-ruled areas. The conquest marks the westernmost expansion of both the Umayyad Caliphate and Muslim rule into Europe.
During the caliphate of the Umayyad Caliph Al-Walid I, forces led by Tariq ibn Ziyad disembarked in early 711 in Gibraltar at the head of an army consisting of Berbers from north Africa. After defeating the Visigothic usurper Roderic at the decisive Battle of Guadalete, Tariq was reinforced by an Arab force led by his superior wali Musa ibn Nusayr and continued northward. By 717, the combined Arab-Berber force had crossed the Pyrenees into Septimania. They occupied further territory in Gaul until 759.

Background

The historian al-Tabari transmits a tradition attributed to the Caliph Uthman who stated that the road to Constantinople was through Hispania, "Only through Spain can Constantinople be conquered. If you conquer you will share the reward of those who conquer." The conquest of Hispania followed the conquest of the Maghreb. Walter Kaegi says Tabari's tradition is dubious, arguing that conquest of the far western reaches of the Mediterranean Sea was motivated by military, political and religious opportunities. He considers that it was not a shift in direction due to the Muslims failing to conquer Constantinople in 678.
Precisely what happened in Iberia in the early 8th century is uncertain. There is one contemporary Christian source, the Chronicle of 754, regarded as reliable but often vague. There are no contemporary Muslim accounts, and later Muslim compilations, such as that of Al-Maqqari from the 17th century, reflect later ideological influence. This paucity of early sources means that detailed specific claims need to be regarded with caution.
The Umayyads took control of Hispania from the Visigoths, who had ruled for roughly 300 years. At the time of the conquest, the Visigothic upper class was beginning to fracture, and had many problems with succession and maintaining power. This was partially due to the fact that the Visigoths were only 1-2% of the population, which made it difficult to maintain control over rebelling populations. The ruler at the time was King Roderic, though this is somewhat contentious.
The manner of King Roderic's ascent to the throne is unclear; there are accounts of a dispute with Achila II, son of his predecessor Wittiza. Later regnal lists, which cite Achila and omit Roderic, are consistent with the contemporary account of civil war. Numismatic evidence suggests a division of royal authority, with several coinages being struck, and that Achila II remained king of the Tarraconsense and Septimania until circa 713. The nearly contemporary Chronicle of 754 describes Roderic as a usurper who earned the allegiance of other Goths by deception, while the less reliable late-ninth century Chronicle of Alfonso III shows a clear hostility towards Oppa, bishop of Seville and probably a brother of Wittiza, who appears in an unlikely heroic dialogue with Pelagius.
There is also a story of one Julian, count of Ceuta, whose wife or daughter was raped by Roderic and who sought help from Tangier. However, these stories are not included in the earliest accounts of the conquest.

Invasion

According to the later chronicler Ibn Abd al-Hakam, the Tangier governor Tariq ibn Ziyad led a raiding force approximately 1,700 men strong from North Africa to southern Spain in 711. However, 12,000 seems a more accurate figure. Ibn Abd al-Hakam reports, one and a half centuries later, that "the people of Andalus did not observe them, thinking that the vessels crossing and recrossing were similar to the trading vessels which for their benefit plied backwards and forwards". They defeated the Visigothic army, led by King Roderic, in a decisive battle at Guadalete in 712. Tariq's forces were then reinforced by those of his superior, the wali Musa ibn Nusayr, who planned a second invasion and within a few years both took control of more than two third of the Iberian peninsula. The second invasion compromised of 18 thousand mostly Arab troops who rapidly captured Seville and then defeated Roderick's supporters at Merida and met up with Tariq's troops at Talavera. The following year Musa and Tariq combined forces continued into Galicia and the northeast capturing Léon, Astorga and Zaragoza.
According to the Muslim historian Al-Tabari, Iberia was first invaded some sixty years earlier during the caliphate of Uthman. Another prominent Muslim historian of the 13th century, Ibn Kathir, quoted the same narration, pointing to a campaign led by Abd Allah bin Nafi al Husayn and Abd Allah bin Nafi al Abd al Qays in 32 AH. However, this putative invasion is not accepted by modern historians.
The first expedition led by Tariq was made up mainly of Berbers who had themselves only recently come under Muslim influence. It is probable that this army represented a continuation of a historic pattern of large-scale raids into Iberia dating to the pre–Islamic period, and hence it has been suggested that actual conquest was not originally planned. Both the Chronicle of 754 and later Muslim sources speak of raiding activity in previous years, and Tariq's army may have been present for some time before the decisive battle. It has been argued that this possibility is supported by the fact that the army was led by a Berber and that Musa, who was the Umayyad Governor of North Africa, only arrived the following year – the governor had not stooped to lead a mere raid, but hurried across once the unexpected triumph became clear. The historian Abd al-Wāḥid Dhannūn Ṭāhā mentions that several Arab-Muslim writers mention the fact that Tariq has decided to cross the strait without informing his superior and wali Musa. The Chronicle of 754 states that many townspeople fled to the hills rather than defend their cities, which might support the view that this was expected to be a temporary raid rather than a permanent change of government.
The Chronicle of 754 stated that "the entire army of the Goths, which had come with him fraudulently and in rivalry out of hopes of the Kingship, fled". This is the only contemporary account of the battle and the paucity of detail led many later historians to invent their own. The location of the battle is not totally clear but was probably the Guadalete River.
Roderic was believed to have been killed, and a crushing defeat would have left the Visigoths largely leaderless and disorganized, partly because the ruling Visigoth population is estimated to have been a mere 1 to 2% of the total population. While this isolation is said to have been "a reasonably strong and effective instrument of government"; it was highly "centralised to the extent that the defeat of the royal army left the entire land open to the invaders". The resulting power vacuum, which may have indeed caught Tariq completely by surprise, would have aided the Muslim conquest immensely. It may have been equally welcome to the Hispano-Roman peasants who were probably – as D.W. Lomax claims – disillusioned by the prominent legal, linguistic and social divide between them and the "barbaric" and "decadent" Visigoth royal family.
In 714, Musa ibn Nusayr headed north-west up the Ebro river to overrun the western Basque regions and the Cantabrian mountains all the way to Gallaecia, with no relevant or attested opposition. During the period of the second Arab governor Abd al-Aziz ibn Musa, the principal urban centres of Catalonia surrendered. In 714, his father, Musa ibn Nusayr, advanced and overran Soria, the western Basque regions, Palencia, and as far west as Gijón or León, where a Berber governor was appointed with no recorded opposition. The northern areas of Iberia drew little attention to the conquerors and were hard to defend when taken. The high western and central sub-Pyrenean valleys remained unconquered.
At this time, Umayyad troops reached Pamplona, and the Basque town submitted after a compromise was brokered with Arab commanders to respect the town and its inhabitants, a practice that was common in many towns of the Iberian Peninsula. The Umayyad troops met little resistance. Considering that era's communication capabilities, three years was a reasonable time spent almost reaching the Pyrenees, after making the necessary arrangements for the towns' submissions and their future governance.

New territorial and civil administration

A preference for treaties

In 713, Abd al-Aziz ibn Musa subdued the forces of the Visigothic count Theodemir, who had taken over southeastern Iberia from his base in Murcia after the power vacuum following king Roderic's defeat. Theudimer then signed a conditional capitulation by which his lands were made into an autonomous client state under Umayyad rule.
His government and the Christian beliefs of his subjects were respected; in exchange, he pledged to pay a tax and to hand over any rebels plotting against Umayyad rule or the Islamic religion. In this way, the life of many inhabitants remained much the same as before Tariq's and Musa's campaigns. The treaty signed with Theudimer set a precedent for the whole of Iberia, and towns surrendering to Umayyad troops experienced a similar fate, including probably the muwallad Banu Qasi based in the Ebro valley, and other counts and landowners.
In exception to this pattern, some towns were stormed and captured unconditionally by the Umayyads, to be governed by direct Arab rule. In the area thought to be part of King Roderic's territory, Mérida also staged a prolonged resistance to the Umayyad advance, but was ultimately conquered in mid-summer 712. As of 713, the last Visigothic king, Ardo, took over from Achila II, with effective control just over Septimania, and probably the eastern Pyrenean threshold and coastal areas of the Tarraconense.
Islamic laws did not apply to all the subjects of the new rulers. Christians were ruled by their own Visigothic law code as before. In most of the towns, ethnic communities remained segregated and newly arriving ethnic groups would erect new boroughs outside existing urban areas. However, this would not apply to towns under direct Umayyad rule. In Cordova, the Cathedral was partitioned and shared to provide for the religious needs of Christians and Muslims. This situation lasted some 40 years until Abd ar-Rahman's conquest of southern Spain.

Taxation

An early governor of al-Andalus, al-Hurr ibn Abd al-Rahman al-Thaqafi, spread the rule of the Umayyad Caliphate up to the Ebro valley and the northeastern borders of Iberia, pacifying most of the territory and initiating in 717 the first forays across the Pyrenees into Septimania. In addition, he laid out the foundations of Umayyad civil administration in Iberia, by sending civil administration officials to conquered towns and lands guarded by garrisons established usually next to the population nuclei.
Moreover, al-Hurr restored lands to their previous Christian landowners, which may have added greatly to the revenue of the Umayyad governors and the caliph of Damascus, by increasingly imposing the vectigalia on the former; this was a tax applied on a specific region or estate, and not per capitation. Only non-Muslims were subject to taxation, apart from a Muslim subject's compulsory alms-giving. The task of establishing a civil administration in conquered al-Andalus was essentially completed by the governor Yahya ibn Salama al-Kalbi 10 years later.
The period following al-Hurr's office saw the establishment of the Arabs in southern Septimania during Al-Samh ibn Malik al-Khawlani's tenure as wali. Narbonne fell, and no sooner had he garrisoned it than the Arab commander led an offensive against Toulouse. During this Umayyad thrust or its aftermath, King Ardo died.

Ethnic groups and internal tensions

In the first stage of the invasion, the armies were made up of Berbers and different Arab groups. These peoples, clustered around the banner of the Umayyads, did not mix together, remaining in separate towns and boroughs. The Berbers, recently subdued and superficially Islamized, were usually in charge of the most difficult tasks and the most rugged terrains, similar to the ones found in their north African homeland, while the Arabs occupied the gentler plains of southern Iberia.
Consequently, the Berbers went on to stations in Galicia and the Upper Marches, but these lands remained unpleasant, humid and cold. The grievances resented by the Berbers under Arab rulers sparked rebellions in north Africa that expanded into Iberia. An early uprising took place in 730, when Uthman ibn Naissa, master of the eastern Pyrenees, allied with the duke Odo of Aquitaine and detached from Cordova.
Those internal frictions continually threatened the ever-expanding Umayyad military effort in al-Andalus during the conquest period. Around 739, on learning the news of Charles Martel's second intervention in Provence, Uqba ibn al-Hajjaj had to call off an expedition to the Lower Rhone in order to deal with the Berber revolt in the south instead. The following year, the Berber garrisons stationed in León, Astorga and other north-western outposts gave up their positions, and some of them even embraced the Christian religion. The Muslim settlement was thereafter established permanently south of the Douro's banks.
The Berber rebellions swept the whole of al-Andalus during Abd al-Malik ibn Katan al-Fihri's term as governor. Reinforcements were then called from the other end of the Mediterranean in a military capacity: the "Syrian" . The Berber rebellions were quelled in blood, and the Arab commanders came up reinforced after 742. Different Arab factions reached an agreement to alternate in office, but this did not last long, since Yusuf ibn 'Abd al-Rahman al-Fihri remained in power up to his defeat by Abd al-Rahman I in 756, and the establishment of the independent Umayyad Emirate of Cordova. It was in this period of unrest that the Frankish king Pepin finally captured Narbonne from the Andalusians.
In Yusuf's and Abd-ar-Rahman's fight for power in al-Andalus, the "Syrian" troops, a mainstay of the Umayyad Caliphate, split. For the most part, Arabs from the Mudhar and Qais tribes sided with Yusuf, as did the indigenous Arabs from northern Africa, while Yemeni units and some Berbers sided with Abd-ar-Rahman, probably born to a north African Berber mother himself. In 756, south and central al-Andalus were in the hands of Abd-ar-Rahman, but it took still 25 years for him to hold sway over the Upper Marches.

Aftermath

The Iberian Peninsula was the westernmost tip of the Umayyad Caliphate of Damascus and was under the rule of the governor of Ifriqiya. In 720, the caliph even considered abandoning the territory. The conquest was followed by a period of several hundred years during which most of the Iberian peninsula was known as Al-Andalus, dominated by Muslim rulers. Only a handful of new small Christian realms managed to reassert their authority across the faraway mountainous north of the peninsula.
In 756, Abd al-Rahman I, a survivor of the recently overthrown Umayyad Dynasty, landed in al-Andalus and seized power in Cordova and Seville, and proclaimed himself emir or malik, removing any mentions of the Abbasid Caliphs from the Friday prayers. In the wake of these events, southern Iberia became de jure and de facto independent from the Abbasid Caliphate. Although this was not accepted outside al-Andalus and those North African territories with which it was affiliated, Abd al-Rahman, and especially his successors, considered that they were the legitimate continuation of the Umayyad caliphate, i.e. that their rule was more legitimate than that of the Abbasids. It seems that Abd ar-Rahman never considered establishing a separate principality.
During the unification of al-Andalus in the reign of Abd ar-Rahman before his death in 788, al-Andalus underwent centralization and slow but steady homogenization. The autonomous status of many towns and regions negotiated in the first years of the conquest was reversed by 778, in some cases much earlier. The Hispanic Church based in Toledo, whose status remained largely undiminished under the new rulers, fell out with the Roman Church during the Adoptionist controversy. Rome relied on an alliance with Charlemagne to defend its political authority and possessions, and went on to recognize the northern Asturian principality as a kingdom apart from Cordova, and Alfonso II as king.
The population of al-Andalus, especially local nobles who aspired to a share in power, began to embrace Islam and the Arabic language. However, the majority of the population remained Christian, and Latin remained the principal language until the 11th century. Historian Jessica Coope of University of Nebraska argues that the pre-modern Islamic conquest was unlike Christianization because the latter was "imposed on everyone as part of a negotiated surrender, and thus lacked the element of personal conviction that modern ideas about religious faith would require" while conquest of dar al-harb was not motivated by a goal of converting the population to Islam, but by the belief that everyone was better off under Islamic rule.
Abd ar-Rahman I founded an independent dynasty that survived until the 11th century. That line was succeeded by a variety of short and small emirates unable to stop the push of the expanding northern Christian kingdoms. The Almoravids and the Almohads occupied al-Andalus next, and the Marinids in 1269, but that could not prevent the fragmentation of Muslim-ruled territory. The last Muslim emirate, Granada, was defeated by the armies of Castile and Aragon under Isabella and Ferdinand in 1492. The last wave of expulsions of Spaniards of Muslim descent took place in 1614.

Chronology

As discussed above, much of the traditional narrative of the Conquest is more legend than reliable history. Some of the key events and the stories around them are outlined below.