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 (r. 705–715), 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. After defeating King Roderic at the Battle of Guadalete in July the same year, Tariq was reinforced by an Arab force led by his superior wāli Musa ibn Nusayr and continued northward.
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 Umayyad rule was disrupted by the Berber Revolt in the North Africa, and in 755 an Abbasid force led by Yusuf ibn Abd al-Rahman al-Fihri landed to claim the territory from the Umayyads. In the meantime, 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, and Muslim presence would remain in al-Andalus until the completion of Reconquista, which was aimed at reclaiming the entire Iberian Peninsula for Christianity, in 1492.
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 al-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.
Precisely what happened in Iberia in the early 8th century is uncertain. There is one contemporary Christian source, the Chronicle of 754, which ends that year and is regarded as reliable but often vague. There are no contemporary Muslim accounts, and later Muslim compilations, such as that of Ahmad al-Maqqari from the 17th century, reflect later ideological influence. Roger Collins writes that the 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. That was partially because the Visigoths were only 1 to 2% of the population, which made it difficult to maintain control over a rebellious population.
The ruler at the time was King Roderic but the manner of his 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 Tarraconense (the Ebro basin) 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, and the less reliable late-9th-century Chronicle of Alfonso III shows a clear hostility towards Oppa, bishop of Seville (or Toledo) and probably a brother of Wittiza, who appears in an unlikely heroic dialogue with Pelagius.
There is also a story of 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.
Musa ibn Nusayr's first reconnaissance missions to Hispania returned with reports of "great splendor and beauty", which increased Muslim desire 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 nine centuries 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:
Whenever some of the scattered tribes of Berbers inhabiting along the northern coast of Africa happened to approach the sea shore, the fears and consternation of the Greeks [Iberians] would increase, they would fly in all directions for fear of the threatened invasion, and their dread of the Berbers waxed so greatly that it was instilled into their nature, and became in after times a prominent feature in their character. On the other side, the Berbers having been made acquainted with this ill-will and hatred of the people of Andalus towards them, hated and envied them the more, this being in a certain measure the reason why even a long time afterwards a Berber could scarcely be found who did not most cordially hate an Andalusian [people of Spanish/Christian descent], and vice versa, only that Berbers being more in want of Andalusians than these are of them.
Establishment of the Umayyad polity of al-Andalus
Conquest and Treaty
أيها الناس أين المفر البحر من ورائكم والعدو أمامكم وليس لكم والله إلا الصدق والصبر
[People! Where is there to escape? The sea is behind you and the enemy in front of you, and by God, there is nothing for you now but courage and endurance.]
– Attributed to the Umayyad commander Tariq ibn Ziyad in a khutba of dubious authenticity he is supposed to have delivered upon his troops' arrival on European shores and the legendary burning of the ships, these words are prominent in Muslim recollections of the conquest.
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 wāli 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 ibn Nafi al-Husayn and Abd Allah ibn Nafi al-Abd al-Qays in 32 AH (654 CE), but there is no solid evidence about this campaign.
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 details 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.
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
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)". The treaty entailed that the local ruler, Theodemir, would remain in power as long as he recognized Muslim suzerainty, constituted in Abd al-Aziz, and paid monetary tribute. Furthermore, Abd al-Aziz agreed that his forces would not plunder or "harass" Theodemir's town or people, an agreement that extended to seven more towns as well.
His government and the Christian beliefs of his subjects were respected; in exchange, he pledged to pay a tax (jizya) and to hand over any rebels plotting against Umayyad rule or the Islamic religion. In that 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.
Some towns (Cordova, Toledo, etc.) 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 (or 714), the last Visigothic king, Ardo, took over from Achila II, with effective control over only 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 continued to be ruled by their own Visigothic law code (Forum Iudicum) as before. In most of the towns, ethnic communities remained segregated, and newly arriving ethnic groups (Syrians, Yemenites, Berbers and others) would erect new boroughs outside existing urban areas. However, that 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. The situation lasted some 40 years until Abd ar-Rahman's conquest of southern Spain (756).