Spain

In 710, Witiza, head of the Gothic kingdom of Spain, died and though he had adult sons, a nobleman named Roderick seized the kingdom, allegedly at the instigation of the senate. Numismatic evidence reveals a divided Spain: Roderick's coins are found in the southwest and central regions while those of a certain Achila are encountered in the northeast. Tariq ibn Ziyad decided to take advantage of this division and crossed the straits from Tangiers to Spain in the early summer of 711 with a substantial force of Arabs and Berbers. Our earliest source, a mid-eighth-century Spanish Christian chronicle, says that the force was sent by Musa, but Muslim sources have Tariq act on his own initiative and say that Musa only arrived the following year. He is portrayed as being at first disgruntled by Tariq's failure to consult him before acting, but he was quickly won over once he learned of the profitability of the venture. The first major encounter between the two sides took place in the summer of 711 to the east of Cadiz, and in the course of the battle, relates our Christian chronicler, with some hyperbole, “the entire army of the Goths, which had come with Roderick, treacherously and in rivalry out of ambition for the kingship, fled and Roderick was killed.”

Late Muslim sources describe various encounters at sundry locations between the invading Arab-Berber forces and the local populace, but earlier writers are much more reserved. Baladhuri (d. 892), for example, just notes very briefly the capture of Cordoba and Toledo. The aforementioned Christian chronicle mentions only the conquest of Toledo, though it states that Musa imposed on the adjacent regions “an evil and deceitful peace,” and he devastated not only Hispania Ulterior (the south and west), but also Hispania Citerior (the northeast) up to and beyond the prosperous city of Zaragoza. Possibly the details of the conquest were unpalatable to him, for he limits himself to a general lament: “Musa ruined beautiful cities, burning them with fire; condemned lords and powerful men to the cross and butchered youths and infants with the sword,” culminating in the hyperbolic observation that “even if every limb were transformed into a tongue it would be beyond human capability to express the ruin of Spain and its many and great evils.”

The reference to a “deceitful peace” offers a clue to why the country (or at least the western two thirds of it, since the northeast remained independent) fell so easily to the invaders, namely, local lords made agreements with the Arab-Berber generals. This is certainly the impression that late Muslim sources give, the most well-known example being the treaty drawn up between Musa’s son and a certain Theodemir, who controlled a portion of southeast Spain around modern Murcia. In conformity with agreements made in the east, which, as we have said, followed ancient traditions about the proper conduct of war, Musa’s son pledged to protect life, property, and the Christian religion in return for submission, tribute, and a promise not to shelter fugitives nor to aid the enemy. In this way a proportion of the Visigothic aristocracy managed to retain some of their lands and customs. It would seem that their ancestry continued to count for something long after the conquest, for a number of writers boast of their links with the old regime, such as the historian Ibn al-Qutiya (“son of the Gothic woman”; d. 977), who proudly advertised his descent from Sarah, granddaughter of the last legitimate king of the Goths.

The Arab-Berber conquest of Spain is very poorly documented and this has led some to question the traditional narrative of how it happened. Perhaps, they say, it occurred slowly by steady immigration and social interaction, as in the rise of Saxon England, rather than suddenly by large-scale invasion.8 It is certainly likely that the conquest was more piecemeal than our sources would have us believe, and without doubt the Islamization of the region proceeded chiefly by social rather than military means. For example, Pope Hadrian (77295) laments that in Spain it is common for Catholics to marry their daughters to heathens (meaning Muslims). However, coins minted in the name of Arab authorities in Arabic and Latin from the year 716 onward make it abundantly clear that a new regime was in place and that the Arabs were in command of it, even if the majority of the troops may have been Berbers (Figure 5.3). In the end, the reason for the lack of interest in Spanish affairs by Muslim writers from the central Islamic lands simply reflects the fact that Spain was for them

FIGURE 5.3 Gold coin, Spain, dated 98 AH (716—17), legends in Latin and Arabic. © Tonegawa Collection.

A remote country that had a negligible impact on their lives. Consequently, they either said very little about it or concentrated on the fantastical—the locked house that could only be opened by the conqueror of Spain, the city of brass with leaden domes—and on the very few occasions when Spain impinged on the east, such as when Tariq and Musa appeared before the caliph Walid in Damascus and argued over which one of them had discovered in Spain the table of the Israelite king Solomon.9