The decline of Rome due to the various barbarian invasions caused the empire to adopt the ”foederati”, a system by which less hostile tribes were invited to make military interventions against the enemies of the Empire in exchange for advantageous territorial portions to live. Thus, the Germanic Visigoths were invited by Emperor Flavius Honorius to fight Vandals, Suebi, and Alans, and to establish the order in southwestern Gaul under the leadership of their king, Ataulf, in 410. After settling in Gallia Aquitania, these warriors broke the agreement with the Romans a few decades earlier, and under King Eurico, who reigned between 466-484, they began to annex other Roman provinces, one of them, Hispania, which comprised the Iberian Peninsula, forming their own independent kingdom, different from what they had Combined.

After being expelled by the Franks from Gaul in the early sixth century, this Germanic people had to be content to settle in the Iberian part of their kingdom, founding a new capital, Toledo, and reigning there under the mix of Phoenicians, Celts, Iberians , Carthaginians, Romans, Celtiberians, Hebrews, Alans, Basques, Greeks, Suebis and Vandals that were mixed since before the Roman annexation. The establishment of the Visigoths, however, was not at all peaceful, and they had to face the resistance of several peoples who already lived there and their kingdoms, and would not tolerate those Germans, who were invited to make an intervention in Gaul in the first place, and now, broking their alliance with another invader, Rome, had annexed Hispania. After countless civil wars, conflicts with local military leaders, and the attempt by the Byzantines to re-attach Iberian territory to the Roman Empire being repealed by Suintila (r. 621-631), the Visigoth Kingdom was finally established

Since before the conversion of Recaredo I (586–601) to Catholicism, Visigoths had been Aryan Christians, and this non-Chalcedonian strand of Christianity had taken root in the kingdom. With the adoption of Roman Christianity by kings and part of the nobility, the Aryans began to be persecuted and to have their bishops removed, as well as the Jews, who were the minority that most felt the weight of the iron fist of the Visigoths, being enslaved.

The Visigothic kingdom functioned in a kind of elective monarchy, through which it was the barons of the high aristocracy who chose the future sovereign, whenever the previous king died, a system which, obviously, caused almost infinite conflicts. Between 710-711, the wise king Vitiza died, probably murdered. The old king added enemies both in the Catholic establishment and among the nobles, for things like encouraging the marriage of priests as well as political relief for the Jews. It is speculated that those who ended the king’s life were the supporters of the noble Rodrigo, who would become the main candidate for succession. Rodrigo had the rivalry of Ágila, son of Vitiza, who was equally willing to fight for his father’s throne. In this period, the kingdom was divided once again, with both candidates collecting influential support for a civil war that was now starting. Once more, by the way.

Agila, younger and weaker, had been defeated by Rodrigo, who took control of the Peninsula and the Kingdom, against the will of many, who still preferred the continuity of the Vitiza line, but whose supporters found no refuge except in Septem, now Ceuta. In North Africa, on the other side of the Strait of Gibraltar, the last Byzantine exarch, Count Julian, maintained an outpost in the Maghreb, which had just been taken over in its entirety by Muslims a few decades ago, who ruled it from ifriqiya, under Mussa Ibn Nusayr, an Umayyad officer. On one occasion, Rodrigo demanded, as proof of loyalty from Julian, the Christian ruler further south, that his daughter, Florinda, be sent to court in Toledo to be educated there, and to maintain her father’s loyalty. Julian did so, however, the Visigoth monarch raped and impregnated the young woman.

Angered, Julian was now talking to Agila supporters so that the despot Rodrigo could be overthrown. But who to turn to? His Byzantine compatriots on the other side of the Mediterranean were involved in their own conflicts with the expansive Umayyad Caliphate, and they no longer had any interest or means of recovering the ancient Hispania taken by the Visigoths. So it was who was closest, Tariq Ibn Ziyad, to whom he and the noble Visigoths unhappy with the king turned.

Tariq, governor of Tangier, had 1,700 men with him, and the most efficient army of his time. Basically, nothing stopped Muslims, who were not even interested in Europe, and at that time were focused on the rich and prosperous Central Asia, the place of the ancient Silk Road, which if taken, would make the Umayyad Caliphate the most powerful empire on earth. But with no specific orders from his superiors, however, Tariq decided to help Julian and the dissidents.

However, historians debate what the terms of the agreement would be. According to some, Julian was not a Byzantine but of a Visigoth origin, wanting with the help of Tariq to establish Agila on the throne. Others speculate that abandoned by the Byzantines and with the personal quarrel with Rodrigo, the rapist of his daughter, the count saw no problem in opening the doors of the kingdom to rulers that he considered more just, and whose empire was more organized, wishing to be integrated with the Umayyads. In any case, the fact is that Tariq agreed to intervene in the neighboring kingdom, basically as the Visigoths had done before when they agreed to intervene in Roman affairs.

The Berber commander arrived with his few troops in the spring of 711. Landing at the foot of a mountain that today bears his name, ” Gibraltar ”, or “Tariq’s Mountain”, he had all his ships set on fire, and told his men that there would be no return home. It was fighting or dying. Helped by Visigoth allies who already knew the terrain, it was easy to avoid ambushes.

King Rodrigo did not even know of the arrival of the Muslims invited by Julian, as he was in the north, fighting his brothers in Christ, the Basque. When he heard about the Muslim army, they were already in continuous progress, taking some positions, cities and villages, to the delight of the Jews, who saw them as liberators of that decadent kingdom that oppressed them.

The forces of king Rodrigo and Tariq met on the banks of the Guadalete River, and there they fight a fierce battle. Rodrigo and his men find themselves desperate, when even then, more and more deserters pass to the side of Tariq. The Visigoth army was massacred, and Rodrigo himself was killed. After the aftermath of the battle, the Muslim advance continues, and with the arrival of Musa and his reinforcements, the Conquest of Tariq is then completed.

Vitiza’s sons and other nobles where incorporated into the Umayyad bureaucracy, and life there does not change much, apart from the new names on the coins. Religious freedom was restored, with Aryans, Jews and Catholics being able to practice their faiths, and Christian bishops, Oppa being the most famous, being integrated into the Islamic government. Some resisters sought to establish their independence with the end of the kingdom and took refuge in Asturias and the Basque region, which did not arouse the interest of the Muslims at that time, as they were remote, mountainous, and poor.

And so, just as Hispania was taken 250 years before by the Visigoths, taking advantage of an agreement that they did not comply with the Romans, they also lost it to an agreement, apparently, also not fulfilled by Muslims either, who took advantage of the invitation to intervene to take the Kingdom, as the Visigoths had done before them. And as the old Brazilian saying goes: ”A thief who steals another thief has a hundred years of forgiveness”, but, in the case of the invited Muslims, 781 years to be more precise, because the Islamic governance in the Iberian Peninsula would last until 1492.

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Bibliography:

-Cameron, Ward; Perkins and Whitby. The Cambridge Ancient HIstory – Volume XIV. Late Antiquity: Empire and Successors, A.D. 425–600. p. 48.

-BUNTING, Tony – Guadalete – 711 in 1001 Battles that changed the course of history. Dir. R. G. Grant. Londres: Quintessence Editions, 2011.

-LAGO, José; RODRÍGUEZ, José – Los Visigodos: El fin del reino visigodo

-Bachrach, Bernard S. “A Reassessment of Visigothic Jewish Policy, 589–711.” The American Historical Review, Vol. 78, No. 1. (Feb., 1973), pp 11–34.

-Ibn ‘Abd al-Hakam (1922). Charles Cutler Torrey (ed.). Kitāb futuḥ misr wa akbārahā: The History of the Conquests of Egypt, North Africa, and Spain. New Haven: Yale University Press.

–Henry Bradley (1887) The story of the Goths
-Brian A. Catlos, Kingdoms of Faith: A New History of Islamic Spain