page_title: Early Muslim conquests
section_title: Conquest of Hispania and Septimania: 711–721
hierarchical_section_title: Early Muslim conquests / Military campaigns / Conquest of Hispania and Septimania: 711–721
caption_attribution_description: Eaerly Islamic, Umayyads. temp. Sulaiman. 715-717 AD. AV Solidus/Dinar (4.16 g, 1h). Dated AH 98 (716/7 AD). Al-Andalus mint (Spain). FERITOS SOLI IN SPAN ANXCI (Feritos Solidus in Spania Anno XCI); eight-pointed star "Muhammad rasul Allah" in two lines across fields, "bismillah struck was this dinar in al-Andalus in the year eight and ninety" in outer margin. Balaguer 49; Miles, Umayyads, 1e; Gomez 7; cf. Walker, Arab-Byzantine, p. 79, C.17; Kazan -; cf. Album 122. Good VF, good strike on large flan. A very rare and early bilingual dinar of Muslim Spain. A similar example appeared in Sotheby's 12 July 1993, lot 171 where it realized £19,800. The eight-rayed star on the obverse of this coin is similar to an earlier all-Latin dinar struck in Spain and dated by its reverse indictional formula to 712/713 AD, and fractional dinars struck in North Africa with a Byzantine-style reverse (see lot 1797 above). Unlike these other examples, however, the blundered Christian legend on the obverse is accompanied by a well-executed Arabic legend on the reverse, and shows a Muslim celator unfamiliar with the Latin. The presence of the first two types show that as the Umayyads were expanding their control over North Africa and into the Iberian Peninsula during the first two decades of the eighth century AD, the Umayyads struck coins on these earlier models to facilitate their control over the local Christian population. Like a similar one struck in Africa at the same time, our bilingual coin, struck for only two years and with a specifically Islamic reverse, suggests that such facilitation was was becoming unnecessary as the Umayyads were quickly beginning to assert their control of their newly-won territories and replacing such issues with standard Umayyad types.
context_page_description: The early Muslim conquests, also referred to as the Arab conquests and the early Islamic conquests began with the Islamic prophet Muhammad in the 7th century. He established a new unified polity in the Arabian Peninsula which under the subsequent Rashidun and Umayyad Caliphates saw a century of rapid expansion.
  The resulting empire stretched from the borders of China and the Indian subcontinent, across the Middle East, North Africa, Central Asia, the Caucasus, and parts of Europe. Edward Gibbon writes in The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire:
  Under the last of the Umayyads, the Arabian empire extended two hundred days journey from east to west, from the confines of Tartary and India to the shores of the Atlantic Ocean ... We should vainly seek the indissoluble union and easy obedience that pervaded the government of Augustus and the Antonines; but the progress of Islam diffused over this ample space a general resemblance of manners and opinions.
context_section_description: The Muslim conquest of Iberia is notable for the brevity and unreliability of the available sources. After the Visigothic king of Spain Wittiza died in 710, the kingdom experienced a period of political division. The Visigothic nobility was divided between the followers of Wittiza and the new king Roderic. Akhila, Wittiza's son, had fled to Morocco after losing the succession struggle and Muslim tradition states that he asked the Muslims to invade Spain. Starting in the summer of 710, the Muslim forces in Morocco had launched several successful raids into Spain, which demonstrated the weakness of the Visigothic state.
  Taking advantage of the situation, the Muslim Berber commander, Tariq ibn Ziyad, who was stationed in Tangiers at the time, crossed the straits with an army of Arabs and Berbers in 711. Most of the invasion force of 15,000 were Berbers, with the Arabs serving as an "elite" force. Ziyad landed on the Rock of Gibraltar on 29 April 711.  After defeating the forces of king Roderic at the river Guaddalete on 19 July 711, Muslim forces advanced, capturing cities of the Gothic kingdom one after another. The capital of Toledo surrendered peacefully. Some of the cities surrendered with agreements to pay tribute and local aristocracy retained a measure of former influence. The Spanish Jewish community welcomed the Muslims as liberators from the oppression of the Catholic Visigothic kings.
  In 712, another larger force of 18,000 from Morocco, led by Musa Ibn Nusayr, crossed the Straits of Gibraltar to link up with Ziyad's force at Talavera.  The invasion seemed to have entirely on the initiative of Tariq ibn Ziyad: the caliph, al-Walid, in Damascus reacted as if it was a surprise to him. By 713 Iberia was almost entirely under Muslim control. In 714, al-Walid summoned Ziyad to Damascus to explain his campaign in Spain, but Ziyad took his time travelling through North Africa and Palestine, and was finally imprisoned when he arrived in Damascus. The events of the subsequent ten years, the details of which are obscure, included the capture of Barcelona and Narbonne, and a raid against Toulouse, followed by an expedition into Burgundy in 725. The last large-scale raid to the north ended with a Muslim defeat at the Battle of Tours at the hands of the Franks in 732. The victory of the Franks, led by Charles Martel, over 'Abd al-Rahman Ibn 'Abd Allah al-Ghafiqi has often been misrepresented as the decisive battle that stopped the Muslim conquest of France, but the Umayyad force had been raiding Aquitaine with a particular interest in sacking churches and monasteries, not seeking its conquest. The battle itself is a shadowy affair with the few sources describing it in poetic terms that are frustrating for the historian. The battle occurred between 18–25 October 732 with the climax being an attack on the Muslim camp led by Martel that ended with al-Ghafiqi being killed and the Muslims withdrawing when night fell. Martel's victory ended whatever plans there may have been to conquer France, but a series of Berber revolts in North Africa and in Spain against Arab rule may have played a greater role in ruling out conquests north of the Pyrenees.
caption: Bilingual Latin-Arabic dinar minted in Iberia AH 98 (716/7 AD)
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