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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. |
The conquest of
the former Roman province of Hispania by the Moors (note that "Moors"
only means the people from the north-east corner of Africa who carried
out the conquest, including both Arabs and the original natives, the
Berbers) marked the history and culture of Portugal and particularly
Spain profoundly. This is the story of the Moorish invasion and
occupation.