The Arab conquest in Spain was consolidated in just eight months

In the spring of 711, a Muslim fleet crossed the strait that separates Africa from the Iberian Peninsula, at the edge of the western Mediterranean. On the horizon he made out a rock that would be their meeting point; they would name it Gabel-Tariq, or the mountain of Tariq in Arabic, in homage to the sheikh who commanded it. The landform would later be known as Gibraltar, by phonetic deformation.

With the promontory of Ceuta, on the other side, it made up the mythical Columns of Hercules, which with its fabulous legend of “Non Plus Ultra” warned sailors that there was nothing beyond; there the known world ended in antiquity.

The host consisted of 15,000 men, veterans of the conquest of North Africa. It was a mixture of Yemenis, Syrians and Maghrebis, the latter also known as Berbers or Moors, who were originally from Al-Maghreb, Roman Mauritania, a territory that corresponds to the current countries of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. By assimilation they would end up constituting a new identity, the Saracens.

They had been incited to participate in the dispute over the succession of the Visigothic kingdom of Hispania, which included almost all of Spain, Portugal and a part of southern France. On the death of King Witiza, a year ago, it was intended that he was succeeded by one of his sons, but since there was no tradition of the hereditary throne, the nobles chose Don Rodrigo, belonging to a rival clan.

The losing side went to seek the help of Count Julián, governor of Ceuta, of Byzantine origin, who according to a fable, he had a deep grudge against the new king for having abused his daughter Florinda, whom he had sent to the court of Toledo, the Visigoth capital, in order to procure a suitable link for her. He would be in charge of letting the powerful Muza, governor of Tunisia know, of the dissensions in the overseas kingdom that were conducive to the invasion.

Territorial expansion

On the death of the prophet Muhammad in 632, his disciples began a rapid conquest to spread the true faith, backed by the promise that there would be no territory to oppose it, and that the martyrs of the struggle would go to heaven to enjoy luxuries and voluptuousness. unimaginable to a mortal. Starting from the Arabian peninsula, they fell like dominoes: Syria (634-638), Egypt (638-643), Mesopotamia (634-642), Libya (634) and the Maghreb, whose submission took 30 years, slowing its expansion.

Hispania, the gateway to Europe, it was coveted by the Muslims as a kind of Arcadia, an idyllic kingdom. “It is a wonderful land, fertile and beautiful like Syria, warm and sweet like Yemen, abundant like India in aromas and flowers, similar to Hegiaz (Western Arabia) in its fruits and Cathay (China) in its precious metals”, an author referred.

Don Rodrigo was fighting a rebellion in the north of the Cantabrian Sea when he received the news of the enemy presence. He had to turn his back to head south, ordering a general levy to multiply his troops. Meanwhile Tariq, receiving a cavalry reinforcement consisting of 5,000 horsemen, undertook a run in defiance of a decisive battle. As a sign of resolution, that there would be no turning back, he ordered the burning of his ships, an example that Hernán Cortés would repeat when he conquered Mexico.

On the banks of the Guadalete river, near Jerez de la Frontera (south-western Spain), the two armies clashed. “The crowd of enemies was so great that the dust that they kicked up with their feet darkened the sky,” wrote one narrator. The Visigoths could have added 90,000 troops, while the Saracens a third, but the Spanish-Gothic troops were inexperienced and poorly armed; they were mostly peasants turned into soldiers in a hurry. In the midst of a zenith sun and the scorching summer heat, they fought without respite for three days until the Visigoth flanks yielded to the Muslim push, causing the disbandment and immediately a ruthless and bloody persecution.

Christian historians would realize that Don Rodrigo’s body was never found on the battlefield; he simply disappeared and was never heard from again. His white horse, with its gold saddle trimmed with emeralds and rubies, was scarcely found in a quagmire; beside him, in the mud, floated a king’s boot. His Arab counterparts, on the other hand, claim that Tariq himself spear him to death and that his severed head, immersed in camphor, was sent as a war trophy to Walid, Caliph of Damascus.

No waste of time Tariq divided his militia into three bodies, to subdue Córdova, Málaga, personally taking charge of Toledo, none of which offered resistance, negotiating terms of surrender as best they could. Christians and Jews would be allowed to continue practicing their religion in exchange for a tribute from which those who converted to Islam would be exempt. By then, the sheikh had received an order from Muza to halt his advance, which he considered risky, while he arrived with more reinforcements; in practice he was jealous and wanted to have his share on the laurels of victory.

The incomplete table

Disobeying him, Tariq breached the safeguards of the royal treasure room, where he found the 365-legged solid gold and gemstone inlaid table that had belonged to King Solomon, loot taken by Alaric when he sacked Rome in 410. He found the collection of 25 crowns of the Goth kings who had ruled Hispania for three centuries, where their names, time of reign and date of death were inscribed. They had belonged to a Germanic tribe originally from the Baltic that migrated to the Carpathians, and later by the push of the Huns to southern Europe, where they would occupy the Iberian Peninsula after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire.

When Muza arrived in Toledo, he harshly demanded that Tariq fail to comply with the order given, ordering his immediate imprisonment. To his surprise, Solomon’s table was missing a leg; she was assured that they had found her that way. In order to arbitrate the dispute, Walid sent for the two to render accounts in Damascus. Muza was credited with the success of the conquest by exhibiting Solomon’s table as evidence; Asked by the caliph about the restored leg, Tariq hastened to give him the original, pretending to prove it was his merit. Due to the intrigue, both protagonists would fall from grace.

The Arab conquest of Hispania was consolidated in a matter of eight months, being completed in just two years. The Christian reconquest would slowly depart from Asturias, culminating in the fall of Granada in 1492, the same year as the discovery of America, eight centuries later. As a tribute to the distant heroic time, the mythical Columns of Hercules appear on the national shield of Spain with the legend changed to “Plus Ultra”, for the glory of having revealed that another world existed beyond the civilization of the Modern Age. (I)