Umayyad conquest of Hispania The Umayyad conquest of Hispania is the initial Islamic Umayyad Caliphate ' s conquest , between 711 and 788 , of the Christian Visigothic Kingdom of Hispania , centered in the Iberian Peninsula , which was known to them under the Arabic name al - Andalus . The conquest began with an invasion by an army that ( according to traditional accounts ) consisted largely of Berber Northwest Africa ns and was commanded by Tariq ibn Ziyad . They disembarked in early 711 at Gibraltar and campaigned their way northward . After the decisive Battle of Guadalete against the usurper Roderic and the defection to the Saracens of the legitimate heirs to the throne , the initial raids became , to the surprise of the raiders themselves , territorial gains successfully conquered and retained . The Visigothic kingdom splintered into client - dominions of the Umayyads . Over the following decade , most of the Iberian Peninsula was further occupied and brought under Umayyad sovereignty . In 714 Musa ibn Nusayr headed north - west up the Ebro to overrun western Basque regions and the Cantabrian mountains all the way to Gallaecia , with no relevant or attested opposition . However , these northern areas drew little interest to the conquerors and were hard to defend when taken . The high western and central sub - Pyrenean valleys remained unconquered . By 717 the invaders had moved northeast across the Pyrenees to occupy Septimania , then under the client - king Ardo , only to be temporarily halted by Odo the Great ´s Aquitanians in the Battle of Toulouse ( 721 ) . However , massing a larger army they resumed their advance to the northwest , defeating Odo at the Battle of the River Garonne . Charles Martel at the time held the high office of mayor of the palace in Francia , and Odo saw no choice but to seek the help of his former enemy , swear an oath of loyalty to him , and join the Frankish military forces , who after a forced march defeated the Muslims at the Battle of Tours ( Poitiers ) in 732 ( or 733 ) . Muslim control of territory in what became France was intermittent and ended in 759 . In the 10th century Al - Andalus became the Emirate ( later Caliphate ) of Córdoba , but at the outset of the invasion it was merely the westernmost tip of the Umayyad Caliphate of Damascus under the rule of the governor of Ifriqiya . In 720 , the caliph even considered abandoning the territory . Though Muslim armies dominated the Iberian Peninsula for centuries afterward , the victory of Pelagius of Asturias at the Battle of Covadonga in 722 , considered in Arab chronicles a revolt in subdued territory , preserved at least one Christian principality in the north . The initial status and boundaries of the Duchy of Cantabria , to join Asturias under Pelagius , is also unclear . This battle later assumed major symbolic importance for Iberian Christians as the beginning of the Reconquista . According to the Islamic rule of law , the sharia , " people of the scriptures " ( Jews and Christians ) may be permitted to practice their faith if they submit to Muslim domination . For this reason numerous Jewish and Christian sects survived and even prospered through the centuries of Islamic rule in al - Andalus . Background . Precisely what happened in Iberia in the early 8th century is subject to much uncertainty . There is one contemporary Christian source , the Chronicle of 754 ( which ends on that date ) , regarded as reliable but often vague . There are no contemporary Muslim accounts . What Muslim information there is comes from later compilations , which are much coloured by the writers ' sense of what was proper , and by contemporary politics — the most prominent such compilation is that of Al - Maqqari , which dates from the 17th century . This paucity of sources means that any specific or detailed claims need to be regarded with caution . What are available are a number of stories that might more properly be described as legends . The manner of King Roderic ' s ascent to the throne is unclear ; there are accounts of dispute with the son of his predecessor Wittiza , and accounts that Wittiza ' s family fled to Tangier and solicited help from there . Numismatic evidence suggests some division of royal authority , with several coinages being struck . There is also a story of one Julian , count of Ceuta , whose wife or daughter was raped by Roderic and who also sought help from Tangier . However , these stories are legendary and not included in the earliest accounts of the conquest . As to the initial nature of the expedition , historical opinion takes four directions : ( 1 ) that a force was sent to aid one side in a civil war in the hope of plunder and a future alliance ; ( 2 ) that it was a reconnaissance force sent to test the military strength of the Visigothic kingdom ; ( 3 ) that it was the first wave of a full – scale invasion ; ( 4 ) that it was an unusually large raiding expedition with no direct strategic intentions . Invasion . In 711 a raiding force from North Africa approximately 1 , 700 - strong led by Tariq Ibn Ziyad landed south of present - day Spain . Ibn Abd - el - Hakem 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 712 . Tariq ' s forces were thence reinforced by those of his superior , the wali Musa ibn Nusair , and both went on to take control of most of Iberia with an army estimated at approximately 10 , 000 – 15 , 000 combatants . The conquering army was made up mainly of Berbers , who had themselves only recently come under Muslim influence . It is probable that this army represented a continuation of a historic pattern of large - scale raids into Iberia dating to the pre – Islamic period , and hence it has been suggested that actual conquest was not originally planned . Both the Chronicle and later Muslim sources speak of raiding activity in previous years , and Tariq ' s army may have been present for some time before the decisive battle . It has been argued that this possibility is supported by the fact that the army was led by a Berber and that Musa , who was the Umayyad Governor of North Africa , only arrived the following year — the governor had not stooped to lead a mere raid , but hurried across once the unexpected triumph became clear . The Chronicle of 754 states that many townspeople fled to the hills rather than defend their cities , which might support the view that this was expected to be a temporary raid rather than a permanent change of government . The Chronicle of 754 states that ' the entire army of the Goths , which had come with him fraudulently and in rivalry out of hopes of the Kingship , fled ' . This is the only contemporary account of the battle , and the paucity of detail led many later historians to invent their own . The location of the battle is not totally clear , but was probably the Guadalete River . Roderic is believed to have been killed , and a crushing defeat would have left the Visigoths largely leaderless and disorganized . In this regard , the ruling Visigoth population is estimated at a mere 1 to 2 % of the total population , which on one hand led to ' a reasonably strong and effective instrument of government ’ , however 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 immensely . Indeed it may have been equally welcome to the Hispano - roman peasants who , as D . W . Lomax claims were disillusioned by the prominent social divide between them and the ' barbaric ' and ' decadent ' Visigoth royal family 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 Nusair advanced and raided Asturias via Soria and Palencia all the way to the coastal town of Gijón , where a Berber governor was appointed ( or possibly in León ) . At this time Muslim troops reached Pamplona too . The Basque town submitted too , 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 Muslim 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 ' submission and their future governance . New territorial and civil administration . In 713 Abd al - Aziz ibn Musa subdued the forces of Visigothic count Theodomir ( or Tudmir ) who had taken over southeastern Iberia from his base in Murcia after the power vacuum following king Roderic ' s defeat . Tudmir then signed a conditional capitulation by which his lands were made into an autonomous client state under Umayyad rule ( " " the rule of God " " ) . His government and Christian beliefs of his subjects were respected in exchange for a tax and handing over any rebels plotting against Umayyad rule or Islamic religion , in a way that life of many a town dwellers and rural inhabitants remained just about the same as before Tariq´s and Musa ' s campaigns started . The treaty signed with Tudmir set a precedent for the whole Iberia , and towns surrendering to Umayyad troops followed a similar fate , including probably the muwallad Banu Qasi based in the Ebro valley , and other counts and landowners . On the other hand , some towns ( Cordova , Toledo , etc . ) were stormed and captured unconditionally by the Umayyads , and were governed by direct Arab rule . However , towns and lands following this pattern became more the exception than the rule . Islamic laws did not apply to all the subjects of the new rulers . On the other hand , Christians were ruled by their own Visigothic law code ( " Forum Iudicum " ) as before . In most of the towns ethnic communities did not mix up , but kept segregated and new groups ( whether they would be Syrians , Yemenites , Berbers or other ) would erect new boroughs outside existing urban areas . However , this 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 . This state of things would generally last during about 40 more years until the internal troubles leading up to Abd ar - Rahman ' s arrival and takeover in southern Spain ( 756 ) . An early governor ( wali ) of al - Andalus , al - Hurr ibn Abd al - Rahman al - Thaqafi , spread the rule of the Umayyad Caliphate up to the Ebro valley and northeastern borders of Iberia , pacifying most of the territory and initiating in 717 the first forays across the Pyrenees into Septimania . In addition , he laid out the foundations of Umayyad civil administration in Iberia , by sending civil administration officials ( " judges " ) to conquered towns and lands , so far closely watched by garrisons established usually next to the population nuclei . Moreover , al - Hurr restored lands seized to previous Christian landowners , which may have added greatly to the revenue of the Umayyad governors and especially the caliph of Damascus , since only non - Muslims could be subject to taxation . The task of establishing a civil administration in conquered al - Andalus was essentially completed by the governor Yahya ibn Salama al - Kalbi 10 years later . Ethnic groups and internal tensions . On the first stage of the invasion , the armies were made up of Berbers and different Arab groups . These peoples clustered around the banner of the Umayyads didn ' t mix together , but remained in separate towns and boroughs . The Berbers , recently subdued and superficially Islamized , were usually in charge of the most difficult tasks and the most rugged terrains , similar to the ones found in their homeland of north Africa , while the Arabs occupied the more gentle plains of southern Iberia . Consequently , the Berbers went on to station in Galicia ( possibly including Asturias ) and the Upper Marches ( Ebro basin ) , but these lands remained unpleasant , humid and cold . The grievances resented by the Berbers under Arab rulers ( attempts to impose a tax on Muslim Berbers , etc . ) sparked rebellions in north Africa that expanded into Iberia . An early uprising took place in 730 , when Uthman ibn Naissa ( Munuza ) , master of the eastern Pyrenees ( Cerretanya ) , allied with the duke Odo of Aquitaine and detached from Cordova . Those internal frictions continually threatened ( or sometimes may , paradoxically , have spurred ) the Umayyad ever - expanding military effort in al - Andalus during the conquest period . Circa 739 , on learning the news of Charles Martel ' s second intervention in Provence , Uqba ibn al - Hajjaj had to call off an expedition to the Lower Rhone in order to deal with the Berber Revolt in the south instead . Later next year , the Berber garrisons stationed in León , Astorga and other north - western outposts gave up their positions , and some of them even embraced the Christian religion . The Muslim settlement was thereafter established permanently south of the Douro ' s banks . The Berber rebellions swept the whole al - Andalus under Abd al - Malik ibn Katan al - Fihri ' s term as governor . Other ethnic groups with little presence up to that point were then called in a military capacity : the " Syrians " ( actually Arabs ) . The rebellions were quelled in blood , and the Arab commanders came up reinforced after 742 . Different Arab factions reached an agreement to alternate in office , but this didn ' t last long , since Yusuf ibn ' Abd al - Rahman al - Fihri ( opposed to the Umayyads ) remained in power up to his defeat by Abd - ar - Rahman I in 756 , and the establishment of the independent Umayyad Emirate of Cordova . It is in this period of unrest that the Frankish king Pepin could finally capture Narbonne from the Andalusians ( 759 ) . In Yusuf ' s and Abd - ar - Rahman ' s fight for power in al - Andalus , the " Syrian " troops , a mainstay of the Umayyad Caliphate , split . For the most part , Arabs from the Mudhar and Qais tribes sided with Yusuf , so did the indigenous ( second or third generation ) Arabs from northern Africa , while Yemeni units and some Berbers took sides with Abd - ar - Rahman , probably born to a north African Berber mother himself . In 756 , south and central al - Andalus ( Cordova , Sevilla ) were in the hands of Abd - ar - Rahman , but it took still 25 years for him to hold sway over the Upper Marches ( Pamplona , Zaragoza and all the northeast ) . Aftermath . The conquest was followed by a period of several hundred years during which most of the Iberian peninsula was known as the province of Al - Andalus , dominated by Muslim rulers . Only a handful of small Christian states survived in the mountainous north of the peninsula . In 756 , Abd ar - Rahman I , a survivor of the then - recently overthrown Umayyad Dynasty , landed in al - Andalus and seized power in Cordova and Seville , proclaimed himself " emir " or " malik " , and removed the Abbasid Caliphs of Damascus from the Friday prayers . In the wake of these events , southern Iberia became " de jure " and " de facto " independent from the Caliphate . During the unification of al - Andalus in the reign of Abd ar - Rahman before his death in 788 , al - Andalus underwent centralization and slow but steady homogenization . The autonomous status of many towns and regions negotiated in the first years of the conquest was reversed by 778 , in some cases much earlier ( Pamplona by 742 , for example ) . The Christian Church , whose status remained largely undiminished under the new rulers , fell into decay after the Adoptionist controversy at the end of the 8th century . Meanwhile , the population ( especially local nobles who aspired to a share in power ) began to embrace Islam and the Arabic language . However , the majority of the population remained Christian ( using the Mozarabic Rite ) , and Latin ( Mozarabic ) remained the principal language until the 11th century . Abd ar - Rahman I founded an independent dynasty that survived until the 11th century . That line was succeeded by the Almoravides ( in 1002 AD ) and the Almohads ( in 1138 ) , until the Marinids took over in 1269 . From that point , the part of the peninsula under Muslim control fragmented into small emirates ( " taifas " ) . This fragmentation left the Muslim - controlled region particularly vulnerable to the continuing relentless campaign of military conquest ( the " Reconquista " ) pursued by the Christian kingdoms of northern Spain , until the last Muslim stronghold of Granada was defeated by the armies of Castile and Aragon under Isabella and Ferdinand in 1492 . Chronology . As discussed above , much of the traditional narrative of the Conquest is more legend than reliable history . Some of the key events and the stories around them are outlined below .