page_title: Moorish Gibraltar
section_title: Early years of Muslim conquest
hierarchical_section_title: Moorish Gibraltar / Early years of Muslim conquest
caption_attribution_description: Mapa indicativo de los fuertes del siglo XVIII de la Bahía de Algeciras Imagen realizada para Wikimedia.
context_page_description: The history of Moorish Gibraltar began with the landing of the Muslims in Hispania and the fall of the Visigothic Kingdom of Toledo in 711 and ended with the fall of Gibraltar to Christian hands 751 years later, in 1462, with an interregnum during the early 14th century.
  The Muslim presence in Gibraltar began on 27 April 711 when the Berber general Tariq ibn-Ziyad led the initial incursion into Iberia in advance of the main Moorish force under the command of Musa ibn Nusayr, Umayyad governor of Ifriqiya. Gibraltar was named after Tariq, who was traditionally said to have landed on the shores of the Rock of Gibraltar, though it seems more likely that he landed somewhere nearby. Muslim sources claimed that Tariq established some kind of fortification on the Rock, but no evidence has been found and it is not considered credible. It was not until 1160 that a first fortified settlement was built there.
  The Madinat al-Fath was intended to be a major city furnished with palaces and mosques, but it seems to have fallen well short of the ambitions of its founder, the Almohad caliph Abd al-Mu'min, by the time it was captured by the Kingdom of Castile in 1309 after a short siege.
context_section_description: Gibraltar's Islamic history began with the arrival of Tariq ibn-Ziyad on 27 April 711 at the start of the Umayyad conquest of Hispania. Traditionally, Tariq was said to have landed on the shores of the Rock of Gibraltar, which was henceforth named after him (Jabal-ı Tārıq (جبل طارق), English: "Mountain of Tariq" – a name which was later corrupted into "Gibraltar" by the Spanish). However, according to one early Islamic account, Tariq "cast anchor close to a mountain which received his name", rather than actually landing at Gibraltar. Another account, by the 9th-century Egyptian historian Ibn 'Abd al-Hakam, describes Gibraltar as lying between the points of departure and disembarkation rather than being the actual landing place. According to this account, the possibly legendary Julian, Count of Ceuta – an ally of Tariq who was estranged from Roderic, the Visigothic king of Hispania – transported the Muslim forces in ships which "in no way seemed different from" those which "plied across the Strait for trade." Spanish accounts corroborate this with the detail that the invasion force was transported "in merchant ships that the reason for their crossing should not be apperceived." Gibraltar would have been a poor place to land due to its relative isolation and difficult rocky terrain, and it is more likely that Tariq either landed in the vicinity of the former Roman colony of Carteia at the head of the Bay of Gibraltar or on the Alboran coast north of Gibraltar around La Tunara (now a barrio of La Línea de la Concepción in Spain), where a landing would have been less conspicuous.
  It has been argued that some kind of fortification was probably constructed at Gibraltar thereafter. According to the 13th century Kurdish historian Ali ibn al-Athir, Tariq built a fort on The Rock, but this was "only for temporary use, and after he had captured the area of Algeciras, he abandoned it ... He descended from the mountains to the desert tract and conquered Algeciras and other places, and he abandoned the fort which was in the mountain." The "fort" probably consisted of no more than a look-out post on the Rock to observe movements in and around the bay during the period of landing; there would have been little need for anything more substantial (as better landing points such as Algeciras or Tarifa were in his hands), and Tariq would not have had the manpower to construct a sizeable fortification. No mention to a permanent occupation of Gibraltar is found in Arab or Christian chronicles, nor archaeological evidence is found until the 12th century.
  As the rest of Al-Andalus, Gibraltar was initially part of the territory of the Umayyad Caliphate before passing to the Spanish branch of the Umayyads, which broke away from the main Caliphate after the Abbasid Revolution. Around 1035, the Umayyad Caliphate of Córdoba splintered into a series of independent taifa kingdoms. The Taifa of Algeciras included Gibraltar and managed to maintain its own independence only until 1056, when it was forcibly absorbed into the Taifa of Seville. By the mid-1060s Seville faced the threat of invasion from the Almoravids of North Africa. The kingdom's ruler, Abbad II al-Mu'tadid, was conscious that the Almoravids could repeat Tariq's feat of three centuries earlier and bring an invasion force across the Strait before the garrison at Algeciras could react. In 1068 he ordered the Governor of Algeciras to "build a fort on Gibraltar, and to be on guard and watch events on the other side of the straits."
  However, nothing seems to have been done before the death of Abbad II in 1069. The Almoravids did come, in 1086, but at the invitation of the taifa kings whose territories were threatened by the expansionist Christian king Alfonso VI of León and Castile. Yusuf ibn Tashfin incorporated the taifas into the Almoravid realm in 1090, but they reemerged 50 years later following the political disintegration of the Almoravid state. The Almoravids' successors, the Almohads, returned to Spain in 1146 and gained control of the taifas once again. Incursions by Alfonso VII of León
caption: Map of the Bay of Gibraltar. Tariq ibn-Ziyad was traditionally said to have landed at Gibraltar, but was more likely to have used the nearby areas of El Mirador (San Roque) or La Tunara (La Línea de la Concepción) as his landing place.
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