The Umayyad Caliphate conquered the Visigothic Kingdom on the Iberian Peninsula in the early 8th century. The conquest resulted in the end of Christian rule throughout most of Iberia and the establishment of Muslim rule in that territory, which came to be known as al-Andalus under the Umayyad dynasty.
During the reign of the sixth Umayyad caliph al-Walid I (), military commander Tariq ibn Ziyad departed from North Africa under the command of Musa ibn Nusayr in early 711 to cross the Straits of Gibraltar, with a force of about 1,700 men, to launch a military expedition against the Visigothic Kingdom based in Toledo, which encompassed the former territory of Roman Hispania.
In 713, Theodemir, the Visigothic count of Murcia conditionally surrendered, and in 715, Abd al-Aziz ibn Musa was named the first governor of Al-Andalus, naming Seville as his capital. By 717, the Umayyads had invaded Gaul to launch their first raids into Septimania. By 719, Barcelona and Narbonne had also been captured. From 740 to 742, the invasion was then disrupted by the Berber Revolt, and in 755 when an Abbasid force led by Yusuf ibn Abd al-Rahman al-Fihri landed to claim the territory from the Umayyads. However, an Umayyad army was decisively defeated by Pelagius of Asturias at the Battle of Covadonga in the mountains of Asturias, securing a Christian stronghold in Northern Spain.
By 781, Abd al-Rahman I had quashed all rebellions and rivals and consolidated Umayyad rule over an almost wholly reunified Iberia, a presence that would remain until the Reconquista, which was aimed at reclaiming the entire Iberian Peninsula for Christianity.
Background
The historian al-Tabari transmits a tradition attributed to Caliph Uthman, who stated that the road to Constantinople was through Hispania, "Only through Spain can Constantinople be conquered. If you conquer [Spain] you will share the reward of those who conquer [Constantinople]". The conquest of Hispania followed the conquest of the Maghreb. Walter Kaegi says Tabari's tradition is dubious and argued 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. who had ruled for roughly 300 years. and had many problems with succession and maintaining power.
Musa ibn Nusayr's first reconnaissance missions to Hispania returned with reports of "great splendor and beauty", which increased Muslim desires to invade Hispania. During one of the multiple raids in 710, the Muslims "made several inroads into the mainland, which produced a rich spoil and several captives, who were so handsome that Musa and his companions had never seen the like of them".
According to Ahmad al-Maqqari’s chronicle, written 900 years later, the natives of Hispania viewed the Berbers in a similar way as the Byzantines viewed the Arabs, as barbarians, and feared an invasion by them.
Establishment of the Umayyad Polity of Al-Andalus
Conquest and Treaty
According to the later chronicler Ibn Abd al-Hakam, the Tangier governor Tariq ibn Ziyad led a force of approximately 7,000 men from North Africa to southern Spain in 711. 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 July that year. 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-thirds of the Iberian Peninsula. The second invasion comprised 18,000 mostly Arab troops, who rapidly captured Seville and then defeated Roderick's supporters at Mérida and met up with Tariq's troops at Talavera. The following year the 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 (Rashidun era). 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 (654 CE), but there is no solid evidence about this campaign.thumb|upright=1.25|The Chronicle of 754 stated that "the entire army of the Goths, which had come with him [Roderic] 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, though not clear, 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. 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. thumb|Roderic, second figure with no face, depicted as one of the "[[The Painting of the Six Kings|six kings" in an Umayyad fresco in Qasr Amra, modern-day Jordan (710–750)]]
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 (or first, depending on the sources) Arab governor Abd al-Aziz ibn Musa (714–716), 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 from 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.
Scholars have emphasized that animosity against the Visigothic rule in some regions of the Visigothic Kingdom, including to a greater extent the deep disagreements and resentment involving the local Jewish communities and the ruling authorities, weakened the kingdom and played a pivotal role in the ultimate success of the Umayyad Conquest of Iberia.
New territorial and civil administration
thumb|upright=1.25|Northeastern al-Andalus, the Pyrenees and southern Gaul at the time of the Berber rebellion (739–742)
Preference for treaties
In 713, Abd al-Aziz ibn Musa subdued the forces of the Visigothic count Theodemir (or Tudmir), who had taken over southeastern Iberia from his base in Murcia after the power vacuum after King Roderic's defeat. Theudimer then signed a conditional capitulation by which his lands were made into an autonomous client state under Umayyad rule.
The Treaty of Theodemir in 713 represents a form of indirect rule that Abd al-Aziz, son of Musa the Umayyad governor of Ifriqiya, installed over "a Visigothic potentate named Theodemir (Tudmir, in Arabic)". 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. However, the majority of the population remained Christians using the Mozarabic Rite, and Latin (Mozarabic) remained the principal language until the 11th century. The historian Jessica Coope of the University of Nebraska–Lincoln 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", but the conquest of Dar al-Harb was motivated not 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.
- 713 – Theudimer's conditional surrender, allowing him to remain lord of his south-eastern region around Murcia (Tudmir).
- 715 – Abd al-Aziz ibn Musa announces first wali of Andalus and marries the widow of King Roderick, Egilona. Seville becomes the capital.
- 717–18 – Al-Hurr ibn Abd al-Rahman al-Thaqafi starts the first military campaigns into Gothic Septimania.
- 719 – Al-Samh ibn Malik al-Khawlani, 4th wali, transfers the seat of Governor from Seville to Cordova. Barcelona and Narbonne captured.
- 721 – An Umayyad army led by Al-Samh crushed by duke Odo's Aquitanian army at the Battle of Toulouse ("Balat Al Shuhada" of Toulouse).
- 722 – An Umayyad patrol defeated by Pelagius at the Battle of Covadonga in the mountains of Asturias.
- 725 – Anbasa ibn Suhaym Al-Kalbi subdues all Septimania, raids the Lower Rhone.
- 731 – Munuza defeated in Cerdanya by Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi.
- Spring 732 – An expedition led by the wali Al Ghafiqi vanquishes duke Odo at the Battle of the River Garonne.
- October 732 – Al Ghafiqi totally routed by Charles Martel (Mayor of the Palace at the Merovingian court) at the Battle of Tours ("Balat Al Shuhada" of Poitiers).
- 734 – Count Maurontus calls Umayyad forces on a military capacity into Arles, Avignon, and probably Marseille.
- 740–42 – Berbers in northern Iberia (Galicia, Leon, Astorga, upper Ebro) give up their positions to join the Berber Revolts.
- 743–757 – Alfonso I of Asturias raids the territory between the rivers Duero and Ebro but doesn't retain it.
- 743 – Mudarites and Yemenites agree on choosing alternately one of their numbers each year to rule Al–Andalus.
- 747 – Governor Yusuf ibn 'Abd al-Rahman al-Fihri, a Mudarite and descendant of Uqbah ibn Nafia, refuses to give turn to the Yemenite candidate and rules autonomously.
- 755 – Rebellion in Zaragoza quashed, and Yusuf's detachment annihilated by the Basques near Pamplona.
- 755 – Abd Al-Rahman Al Dakhel ("Saqr Quraysh") lands on the southern coast, taking in a quick succession Granada, Seville and Cordova.
- 756 – After refusing to compromise with Yusuf, Abd ar-Rahman I independent Umayyad emir of Córdova. Yusuf defeated.
- 759 – Narbonne captured by the Frankish king Pepin the Short.
- 763 – Pro-Abbasid army defeated by Abd ar-Rahman I in Carmona.
- 778 – Charlemagne repelled in Zaragoza by Muslim local lords.
- 779 – Abd ar-Rahman I campaigns to the Upper Marches and subdues its main city, Zaragoza.
- 781 – Pamplona and the Basque lords south of the Pyrenean fringes subdued. All of Al Andalus unified.
See also
- Timeline of the Muslim presence in the Iberian peninsula
- Muslim conquests in the Indian subcontinent