The Moorish Conquest

In April 711, the Arab governor of Tangiers, Tariq ibn-Ziyad, crossed the strait between what are now Morocco and Spain with an army of nine or ten thousand Berbers (the place where they landed was soon to have a new name, the rock of Tariq, Jabal Tariq — Gibraltar). Goth King Roderick hastily took an army south, but Táreq and his Berber troops defeated it in a battle near the River Guadalete, and the king himself was never seen again except in legend. Tariq ordered that a group of prisoners be cut into pieces and their flesh boiled in cauldrons, then released the rest, telling them to spread the word about Moorish practices. He and his army then followed the old Roman roads north to the Goths' capital city, Toledo, pausing only to take the cities of Éjica and Córdoba. Resistance was slight, whether reduced by Tariq's intimidatory propaganda or not. The invasion had been ordered by Musa, the governor of Ifriquiyya (North Africa), and the following year, General Musa himself landed with another Berber army of 18,000, which this time included a large number of Arab officers. He took Medina Sidonia, Seville and Mérida, where a last stand by the Goths failed. And that was more or less that. While on their flanks subordinates took care of Portugal and the east of Spain, Tariq and Musa met up in Toledo and continued north-east up the Ebro valley, encountering practically no resistance at all.

How were armies which at no point exceeded a total of forty thousand troops able to conquer a territory with a population estimated at around four million, and in so brief a time? Historians have different answers. To begin with, the Goths were a ruling class which had never mixed with or been accepted by its subjects, and it seems clear that the Hispano-Roman population did nothing to support them and in most cases welcomed the invaders. In addition, they were far from united themselves: the Goths had a tradition of parricide and fratricide which makes Caligula look like the son you always wanted. Roderick himself had been crowned after a civil war, and many of his opponents simply took sides with the Moors (it is not unlikely that one of the initial reasons for the Moorish invasion was an invitation from supporters of Prince Achila, Roderick's rival for the throne. The Achila band, the theory goes, probably thought that the Moors would come, defeat Roderick, grab some booty and go home).

The Moors proved to be more politically skillful than the ousted Goths, as well. For example, they bribed landowners - including Goth aristocrats and Christian clergy - into cooperation by allowing them to keep their properties. In addition, some historians sustain that there may have been mass conversion to Islam - after all, the difference between one monotheistic religion and the next is not all that important, especially at a time when the element being stressed in both is the existence of an omnipotent god. Under the Visigoths (Goths of the West), the tax burden was heavy and although the special taxes the Muslims imposed on Christians and Jews were more bearable, peasants were better off and had more freedom as Muslims, while serfs became freemen on conversion. Jews, on the other hand, did not even need to change their faith to find themselves relieved of the oppression they were accustomed to under Christian rule.

Musa went to Damascus to show off his triumph (including an entourage of Spanish women), but got caught up in a power struggle when the Caliph died and himself ended his days in prison. His son occupied his place in Al Andalus, marrying Roderick's widow and naming himself governor, but was caught and executed, which with hindsight was an indication of the way things were going to go. The Berbers, who had done the actual fighting, were treated as inferiors by the Arabs and, more importantly, the Arabs kept the best of the booty for themselves. For example, the Berbers were given land on Spain's meseta, in Galicia, or in the mountains, while the Arabs shared out the fertile Levante region in the east of Spain, and the Guadalquivir and Ebro basins. The Berbers mutinied, and as the Arabs were a minority, they brought Syrian troops (who later settled in Andalusia and the Algarve) in to repress the uprising. But more fighting occurred between Yemenite and Kaishite Arabs, and it is arguable that all this unrest prevented the conquerers from finishing the job and allowed the germ of the reconquest to form, in the most inaccessible, unwanted corner of the country, under the leadership of Pelayo.

The first limits to Al-Andalus were set in 722. A Moorish army suffered a series of setbacks when trying to subdue the Cantabrian mountains, where the remnants of Gothic forces had combined with local defenders. Notably, the Arab defeat at the Battle of Covadonga in Asturias is remembered as the beginning of the reconquista. The next, definitive stop to the Arab expansion, not just in Hispania but in the world, came in 732, when the Arabs crossed the Pyrenees into the kingdom of the Franks (under Charles Martel). They were defeated at the Battle of Poitiers and driven back into Hispania.

But, except for the part the Moors called Ishbaniya, the Cantabrian coast and the mountains behind it, the Iberian Peninsula was now Al-Ándalus, a province of the Caliphate of Damascus. In different forms, this Muslim occupation would last nearly another eight hundred years, until 1492.

Moorish Spain and Portugal Links