This is episode 20 called Muslim Umayyad conquest of Spain and in this episode you will learn:

Show notes

• Introduction to a new and complex era of the history of Spain, the Medieval Spain of Muslims and Christians
• What was Pre-Islamic Arabia like
• A brief history of the rise of Islam, from the reveleations of the Prophet Muhammad to the Rashidun and Umayyad Caliphates
• Why the conquest of Spain was the logical step to follow after the conquest of North Africa and what was the Iberian Peninsula like before their conquest
• Introduction to the main characters of the initial conquest of the Visigothic Kingdom: Tariq ibn Ziyad and Count Julian
• How the Muslim forces of Tariq crushed the Visigothic army of Roderic in the Battle of Guadalete, and the betrayal of the brothers of former King Wittiza, Oppas and Sisebut
• Why the weak military system was a cause of the abrupt fall of the Visigothic Kingdom
• How Tariq ibn Ziyad took advantage of his victory and transformed the expedition from a large-scale raid to a full-scale invasion
• The probably brief proclamation of Oppas as King and the fall of Toledo, that eliminated the possibility of a centrally organized resistance
• Why Musa ibn Nusayr, governor of Ifriqiya, prepared a second expedition to Spain
• The resistance of Mérida and the Treaty of Orihuela, as an example of the numerous treaties of capitulation signed between the Muslim conquerors and the Christian nobles, priests and towns
• The Muslim conquest of the Ebro Valley, Cantabria, Asturias and Galicia under Musa and Tariq
• What was the strategy followed to conquer the Iberian Peninsula
• The unhappy ending of Musa and Tariq
• How was the success of the Muslim conquest interpreted by both Muslims and Christians
• Reflection on the common motivations that all conquests have

Script

I’m David Cot, host of The History of Spain Podcast, and this is episode 20 called Muslim Umayyad conquest of Spain. In this episode you will learn about the background of Islam and the Umayyad Caliphate, and the events of the first three years of Muslim conquest of Spain. Subscribe to the podcast to not miss an episode!

This episode has a special importance because it’s the start of a new era of the history of Spain. As we will see in this episode, the abrupt fall of the Visigothic Kingdom caused by the Muslim conquest changed the paradigm. The religious unity of Spain was broken, I mean yeah not 100% of the population of the Visigothic Kingdom was Catholic, but the great majority was. After the Muslim conquest, there were more religious issues because the Christian, Muslim and Jewish faiths lived in the same Iberian Peninsula. Political unity, already weak in the late Visigothic Kingdom, disappeared, and several political entities emerged in Medieval Spain. That meant that borders were permeable and territories were constantly changing hands, and political division also explains the emergence of regional cultures and languages that still exist in modern Spain and Portugal. Spain under the Romans interacted extensively with both Europe and North Africa, under the Visigoths it was more connected with the West, while Muslim Spain interacted more with North Africa. Spain as a Catholic nation, heir of Rome and the Visigoths, almost disappeared. Instead, al-Andalus as a Muslim nation, descendant of both the Latin and Arab cultures, emerged.

Medieval Spain was a long, complex and dynamic period, so both you and I will require to pay attention to detail to avoid oversimplifying this period. Medieval Spain wasn’t just about Christians fighting Muslims, several times Christians and Muslims fought among themselves and they formed alliances with their religious nemesis. Until the 11^th century Muslim Spain was in a position of supremacy over the different Christian states, then between the 11^th and 13^th centuries the balance of power went back and forth, and after that only the Emirate of Granada remained, until its conquest in 1492 led by the Catholic Monarchs. Now, let’s start already with the background of the Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula.

While the Visigothic Kingdom was in a state of chaos and infighting, divided between the supporters of King Roderic and Agila II, the rising Muslim Umayyad Caliphate had already finished the conquest of North Africa after a series of bloody and difficult campaigns. The war machine of the Arab empire was ready for a new campaign to spread the word of the Prophet Muhammad, and to seek for riches of course. But what are the origins of Islam and the secret behind the rapid success in its spreading?

First we need to understand the society of the birthplace of Islam. Pre-Islamic Arabia was a sparsely populated and preliterate place with a population of Semitic origin. There were both sedentary and nomadic Arabs, but Pre-Islamic Arabian society was in any case a tribal society. That means that it was a society organized in clans, and that explains the later conflicts among the Arab elite of the Umayyad Caliphate, such as the Qays-Yaman rivalry between northern and southern Arabians. In terms of political development, there weren’t any long-lasting and relevant Arab states before Islam, as political authority was at the hands of the chiefs of the tribes. You can imagine that the lack of political organization and tribal justice led to ceaseless warfare, that’s why Arab men were skilled warriors. This is similar to the case of the Mongols, whose political anarchy, tribal society and harsh living conditions transformed them into exceptional warriors.

Arabia was a patriarchal society, where women had no social status of any kind and where men could marry as many women as they wanted. Alcoholism and addiction to gambling were common problems among Arab men, that’s why alcohol and gambling were later banned by Islamic laws. As the Arabs lived in a desertic environment, they were used to travel to migrate to places with better living conditions, and they were used to carry out caravan trade. Slavery was a common economic institution in Pre-Islamic Arabia, and the wealthiest and most powerful Arabs were slave traders, merchants and moneylenders. On the religious side, most Arabs were polytheist pagans who venerated various deities and spirits, although there were also some Jews and Christians, as well as a few followers of Iranian religions such as Zoroastrianism. So, religiously, Pre-Islamic Arabia was as much of a mess as politically. I think these social, political and economic conditions help us understand better the characteristics of Islam.

Now let’s overview the origins and rise of Islam. Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam, was a caravan trader and a member of a leading family of the city of Mecca in western Arabia. According to Islamic tradition, in 610 he started having revelations from God through the archangel Gabriel, who required him to preach a monotheistic religion to his fellow Arabs. While Muhammad was undertaking his mission, he had new revelations on ethical doctrines, laws and social rules that needed to be observed by his followers, the Muslims, that means ‘those who have surrendered to God and his Prophet’. Sharia, or Islamic law, touches every aspect of life, from slavery to women rights, and at the heart of the Prophet’s preaching lay the Five Pillars of Islam: there’s only one God, believers must pray five times a day at stipulated times, fast during the hours of daylight in the month of Ramadan, make pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina, and distribute a portion of their personal income to the poor.

Muhammad’s religious message threatened the very pillars of the tribal Arab society, because it had a universalist message of equality, as God didn’t care about race nor about the material wealth of believers. Note that the egalitarian message was only applied to the male Muslims, but it was still an improvement from the previous order. In fact, Islam condemned practices of Pre-Islamic Arabia such as female infanticide, usury, alcohol and gambling, or the exploitation of the poor and slaves. Because of his revolutionary message, which was similar to that of other prophets such as Jesus or Mani, the Prophet faced opposition soon enough. Muhammad and his followers had to move to Medina, where he solved an inter-tribal conflict. Thanks to Medina’s strategic position, Muhammad blocked the commercial trade route between Yemen in southern Arabia and the Byzantine Empire. Mecca depended on that trade, so after years of failed attempts to overrun the Muslims of Medina the tribes of Mecca surrendered and embraced Islam.

Before the death of the Prophet, Muslim forces managed to conquer the majority of the Arabian Peninsula in two years, following the conquest of Mecca. Even though he named a successor, at the death of Muhammad there was a succession problem. A group followed the successor that the Prophet had appointed, who would become the Shias, and others supported another candidate, who would become the Sunni. The Sunni assumed political power and started what became known as the Rashidun Caliphate. The crisis of leadership caused the apostasy of many recently converted tribes, but the rebellion was suppressed. The Muslim schism between Sunnis and Shias was kind of put on pause for about twenty years, and during that time the Rashidun Caliphate rapidly expanded and spread Islam. The Caliphate launched a simultaneous attack on both the Byzantine and Sasanian Empires, two empires that were exhausted after years of war against each other. If the two empires hadn’t fought during almost 30 years, the most likely scenario is that Islam wouldn’t have expanded as much as it did.

But the Arabs, united for the first time under Islam, swiftly invaded the Byzantine provinces of Syria, Mesopotamia, Palestine and Egypt. As for the Zoroastrian Sasanian Empire, it required many bloody campaigns and repression to conquer, but the Islamic Caliphate had conquered it by the 650s. But then a civil war erupted in the Caliphate, between those who supported a cousin of Muhammad and those who supported the cousin of the previous caliph, who had been murdered. This civil war permanently divided the Muslims between Shia and Sunni Muslims. The cousin of the previous caliph, that was seen as the legitimate caliph by Sunni Muslims, won the civil war and replaced the Rashidun with the Umayyad Caliphate in 661, with the capital in Damascus.

The Umayyad Caliphate continued the rapid military expansion of Islamic forces. It’s important to note though that the rapid conquests didn’t mean that the conquered peoples massively converted to Islam. Massive conversions took decades or even centuries depending on the region, and that was the situation during both the Rashidun and Umayyad Caliphates. The situation of having a Muslim Arab elite ruling over a population that was predominantly non-Muslim caused more and more tensions as the caliphate expanded, and the Arab discrimination against those non-Arab Muslims also caused social tensions, because the message of the Prophet included the condemnation of racial discrimination. In terms of expansion, the Umayyad Caliphate conquered modern Pakistan and Afghanistan, Armenia, the Caucasus, North Africa, Central Asia and, of course, the Iberian Peninsula.

For the history of Spain, the conquest that matters as a previous step to the conquest of the Visigothic Kingdom was that of Maghreb in North Africa. The Arabs defeated the Byzantine armies without any major setback, and they founded the city of Kairouan, which would become the capital of the province of Ifriqiya, the renamed Byzantine province of Africa. In 698 Carthage fell and was destroyed, and the Byzantine Empire lost forever all North African territories, territories that were key grain suppliers for the empire. It was a blow from which the Eastern Roman Empire never recovered.

The Byzantine armies were barely an impediment to Arab expansion, but the Berber tribes of the interior regions were a whole different thing. The Berbers of modern Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco blocked any Arab attempt to advance beyond the coasts of Tunisia, until between 703 and 708 Maghreb was conquered and the Umayyad Caliphate gained control over all the North African coast, except for Ceuta. At this point, they were very close to Spain itself and the Muslim forces were waiting for their chance to attack. By 711, the North African province of Ifriqiya was pacified enough for an expedition to be launched into Spain.

In many ways, the conquest of Spain was the logical and necessary step to follow after the conquest of North Africa. Most Umayyad soldiers served in the hope of booty and lands through more conquests, which were beneficial for both Arabs and Berbers, even though the distribution of benefits was asymmetrical. If no new opportunities of conquest appeared, the tribes and groups might fight each other and lead to the disintegration of the caliphate. Luckily, Spain offered the kind of opportunity needed to keep united and expanding the Umayyad Caliphate. For Arab and Berber standards, the Iberian Peninsula was a fertile and wealthy land. The population of Spain in the late Visigothic period has been estimated to be less than 5 million, far from the 6 or 7 million of the 5^th century, as plagues and famines reduced the population of the Iberian Peninsula. We can imagine a very empty landscape, with self-sufficient small towns and large estates, and a kingdom that again had a very weak control over the poor and mountainous north, where the Asturians, Cantabrians and Basques lived. Such was the land the Muslim armies conquered.

But before that, let me address the question of how Islamicised were the conquerors of Spain. In the 630s, the Rashidun Caliphate conquered areas that were predominantly Arab or Semitic, so it was relatively easy to integrate them. The captured non-Muslims were enslaved, and slaves could only be liberated if they embraced Islam and became perpetual clients of the tribe of their previous master. If they converted, they received a share of the spoils of war, although that share was lower than that of the Arabs. That’s how the ranks of the conquerors could continue to grow, as was the case of Musa ibn Nusayr, the governor of Ifriqiya during the conquest of Spain, who was the grandson of an enslaved Syrian Arab. This system worked until the Arabs overextended so much that they became a tiny minority, and their racial discrimination against non-Arabs became unacceptable by their subjects. The overextension was already obvious when the Muslim forces started the conquest of Spain. The bulk of the invading army of Spain was Berber, an ethnic group that had just submitted to Islamic rule and that was far from being truly Islamicised and Arabicized.

The governor of Ifriqiya, Musa ibn Nusayr, appointed his Berber client Tariq ibn Ziyad to rule the Moroccan city of Tangier and to raid Spain. The first step to do so was to conquer Ceuta, a key North African city to control the Strait of Gibraltar. Ceuta was then part of the Visigothic Kingdom, and its governor was a man remembered in Spanish historiography as Don Julián. The historicity of this character has been long a matter of debate among historians. Legend says that Julian collaborated with the Muslims because the King of the Visigoths Roderic had raped his daughter. This tale of betrayal and personal revenge is almost for sure fictional, with the aim to moralize and to explain why the Visigothic Kingdom fell. But it’s very likely that Count Julian existed, I mean, collaborators with foreign invading powers aren’t something new in history. Now let me explain the part of the story that is more plausible. Tariq and Julian arranged an agreement that confirmed the authority of Julian over Ceuta, and the Muslims probably promised him new estates. In exchange, Julian provided ships, a harbor, and intelligence and logistical support. Julian had no choice but to accept this deal, I mean Ceuta would have been put under Muslim control with or without his collaboration, so from an individual point of view better to collaborate and keep his position and wealth.

With the assistance of Count Julian, Tariq sent a commander named Tarif to make a reconnaissance raid in the southern coast of Spain in 710. Maybe in Tarif’s expedition the Muslims also consolidated some alliances with the locals, using the network of contacts of Julian. After the reconnaissance raid, Tariq thought that the prospects of a successful attack were good, but he wasn’t thinking about a full-scale invasion to conquer the entire Visigothic Kingdom, as it later happened. Anyway, Tariq prepared a force of between 7,000 and 12,000 men, who were mostly Berbers, and the Muslim army crossed the Strait of Gibraltar in April 711, landing at the rock that still bears the name of Tariq, Gibraltar. The invading army occupied without resistance the surrounding areas, including Algeciras and Medina Sidonia, therefore the Muslims gained control of the communications between the two shores of the strait.

News of those attacks reached King Roderic, who was then occupied fighting the Basques in the north, although it wasn’t until summer that Roderic was able to lead his army south to expel the Muslims. The army of Roderic was likely larger than that of Tariq, we are talking about maybe 20,000 men, and in mid-July the armies of Tariq and Roderic met somewhere near a river of the province of Cádiz. The battle became known as the Battle of Guadalete, and this battle marked the future of the Iberian Peninsula for the following centuries. The brothers of former king Wittiza, Oppas and Sisebut, accompanied Roderic with hidden intentions. The brothers of Wittiza had the duty to lead the flanks of the Visigothic army, maybe because Roderic wanted to reconcile with the faction that supported Wittiza. However, Oppas and Sisebut had other plans. When they had to charge against the army of Tariq, the soldiers in the flanks defected and abandoned the battlefield. King Roderic was left with only his loyal supporters, and now they had a numerical disadvantage. It’s not like Oppas and Sisebut had made an alliance with the Muslims, instead the brothers of Wittiza thought that the Muslims would defeat Roderic, raid southern Spain and then leave. What neither the Muslim nor Christian forces expected was the crushing defeat that the Visigoths suffered in the Battle of Guadalete. King Roderic himself was killed and Visigothic losses were very high. The situation was very similar to that of 507 when the Franks defeated the Visigoths in the Battle of Vouillé and killed the King of the Visigoths. The key difference was that this time the Visigoths had no ally such as the Ostrogoths to back them in this critical moment. In a single battle, the fate of the Visigothic Kingdom was sealed.

Another reason why Visigothic Spain fell quickly after the Battle of Guadalete was its military system. As in the rest of post-Roman Germanic kingdoms of Europe, there was no standing army in the Visigothic Kingdom. The nobles brought their clients and subordinates in response to royal summons, and the king rewarded them with legal concessions, new estates, or gold and silver. The weakness of this system that functioned during the Middle Ages in Europe is obvious: the bulk of the troops are loyal to their lords, not necessarily the monarchy, which is exactly what happened with the betrayal of the brothers of Wittiza. At the time military disaster meant the dispersal of the supporters of the previous king, who had to elect a new king in Toledo. The problem, as we will soon see, was that Toledo quickly fell after the Battle of Guadalete, which left the Visigothic Kingdom in chaos and eliminated the possibility of a centrally organized resistance. For those well versed in English history, this situation may remind you to that of the Norman conquest of England in 1066.

The unexpectedly crushing victory of Tariq ibn Ziyad changed the objective of the expedition, from a large-scale raid to a full-scale invasion. Like other Muslim invasions, the idea to transform a raid into an invasion didn’t start as a result of the initiative of the Caliph al-Walid or even the governor Musa ibn Nusayr. It looks like it was entirely Tariq’s idea. All of Spain laid open to Muslim conquest, so, in the aftermath of the Battle of Guadalete, Tariq moved quickly to take advantage of his victory. He split his army, moving the main army under him to the capital of the kingdom, Toledo, while dispatching a smaller army to Cordoba. In Cordoba the Muslims encountered some opposition, as a group of nobles took refuge in a church and fortress where they resisted for three months. After that time, and seeing that no one was coming to help them, they surrendered and arranged agreements with the conquerors. On the other hand, Málaga, Cádiz and Granada were conquered without resistance.

The brother of Wittiza Oppas arrived in Toledo before Tariq, and he was probably proclaimed king, but only a few days after that happened Oppas fled Toledo along many other people. Abandoned by those who could have put up a fight, the little resistance that could still be offered wasn’t enough and Tariq conquered Toledo. The fall of Toledo, the capital of the Visigothic Kingdom, had an important psychological and political blow. Apart from north-eastern Spain that was controlled by the Visigothic pretender Agila II, the rest of the regions could only put up an isolated resistance with no coordination with other regions. In Toledo, the Muslims executed many nobles, as they were either too close to the aristocratic families that ruled the Visigothic Kingdom, or they had supported Oppas. We don’t know the fate of Oppas, but we do know that his brother Sisebut established himself in Coimbra, in modern Portugal. Sisebut wasn’t the only noble who fled to the north to live outside of al-Andalus, but we will see that within two episodes when I will talk about the start of the Reconquista.

When word of the incredible success of his client Tariq reached Musa ibn Nusayr, he felt envious of the achievements of his subordinate and decided to send reinforcements and prepare an army that he would lead himself. It wasn’t difficult to recruit new Berber and Arab soldiers, because everyone heard about the opportunity to enrich themselves. From Kairouan Musa departed in 712 with maybe more than 10,000 men, many of which were Arabs. The objective of the expedition was to make very clear that Musa ibn Nusayr was the legitimate authority and that the conquest of the Visigothic Kingdom would be his personal achievement. I’m sure Tariq wasn’t very enthusiastic about this idea. The governor of Ifriqiya first gathered information and thoroughly planned the route that his army would follow. Then Musa landed at Algeciras and conquered the fortress of Carmona in southern Spain, which was captured with the help of native collaborators that pretended to be refugees and from within they opened the gates. Then Musa ibn Nusayr laid siege on Seville and it was conquered by force, which means that the properties of the locals weren’t to be respected. After being conquered, Seville became the capital of the new conquered lands, which was a quite logical decision, since it was the most economically powerful city of Spain and it has a navigable river, the Guadalquivir.

Then Musa divided his forces, the majority remained under the governor of Ifriqiya while a smaller army under his son Abd al-Aziz moved to the southeastern region of Murcia. In Mérida Musa faced serious resistance, as Mérida had the magnificent Roman walls and aqueduct that made its conquest difficult. For more than a year, Mérida resisted until the city capitulated in the summer of 713. The conditions of the surrender were that all the properties of the clergy and those who had fled the city were to be confiscated, while the Muslims would respect the life, property and faith of the rest of the local population. As for the son of Musa, Abd al-Aziz, he conquered the region of Murcia with the surrender of Theodemir. Theodemir was a Gothic noble who had defended a few years before the southern coast of Spain from a weird Byzantine attack. It’s said that Theodemir had to dress up women and children as soldiers to create the illusion that he could defend his estates and that it was better to negotiate without a fight. His example shows how defenseless Visigothic Spain was. Luckily for him, the trick worked and Abd al-Aziz and Theodemir signed what’s known as the Treaty of Orihuela or Treaty of Theodemir, a treaty of surrender that has been preserved. Let me quote a fragment of the treaty:

“We will not set special conditions for him or for any among his men, nor harass him, nor remove him from power. His followers will not be killed or taken prisoner, nor will they be separated from their women and children. They will not be coerced in matters of religion, their churches will not be burned, nor will sacred objects be taken from the realm, as long as he remains sincere and fulfills the conditions that we have set for him. He has reached a settlement concerning seven towns: Orihuela, Villena, Alicante, Mula, Bigastro, Ello, and Lorca. He will not give shelter to fugitives, nor to our enemies, nor encourage any protected person to fear us, nor conceal news of our enemies. He and his men shall pay one dinar every year, together with four measures of wheat, four measures of barley, four liquid measures of concentrated fruit juice, four liquid measures of vinegar, four of honey, and four of olive oil. Slaves must each pay half of this amount.”

Surrender agreements such as these were signed in many cities and with many Spanish nobles and priests. As you can see, the terms of the treaty are assumable, which is why many nobles and towns submitted instead of trying to resist the Muslim conquest, which would have provoked a futile bloodbath. The conditions of capitulations varied though, as in some towns the Muslims demanded captives and properties, while in others they respected the faith of the natives and the local authorities in exchange of their loyalty and tribute. A few towns were burned and destroyed, and in those cases the local population was killed, but that very rarely happened. The enslavement of the local population, particularly young women to turn into sexual slaves, the taking of hostages or plunder were much more common though, so don’t get it wrong, the conquest was far from being peaceful.

Going back to the expedition of Musa, as the siege of Mérida was taking a long time, Musa left the city before its fall to move to Toledo, to meet again with Tariq and make clear that he was the boss. As you can imagine there were tensions and disputes over the booty, but they left together Toledo after the winter and launched a joint expedition to submit the Ebro Valley, Cantabria, Asturias and Galicia. There they continued to occupy the administrative regional centers, such as Zaragoza, Pamplona, Leon, Astorga or Lugo. The Muslims made hundreds of nobles prisoners and captured their treasures. Many of them were refugees that had fled Toledo or their respective hometowns with the hope that the Muslim invasion would be repelled, but that didn’t happen. Those who believed that the new conquerors were there to stay could exploit that to their advantage. For instance, Count Cassius converted to Islam to preserve his lands and to become a close native collaborator of the new regime. This Count Cassius founded the Banu Qasi dynasty that became important in the Andalusian politics of the 9^th and 10^th centuries.

In a matter of just three years, only Septimania, Lusitania and modern Catalonia and Valencia remained out of Muslim control. The strategy followed to conquer the Visigothic Kingdom wasn’t innovative. The conquest was similar to that of Iran, although it all happened faster, on a smaller scale and with less bloodshed. The first stage of the conquest was about conquering the main cities and lines of communication, as well as the fertile lands of southern and southeastern Spain. The second stage, that happened gradually and only after the expedition of Musa and Tariq, involved the conquest of the north-east and making effective Muslim control over rural and remote areas.

However, this story didn’t have a happy ending for the main characters of the conquest. The success of Musa and Tariq drew the attention of the Umayyad Caliph al-Walid, who summoned them in Damascus. Musa and Tariq reluctantly left Spain in September 714, along captives and nobles such as Count Cassius, leaving his son Abd al-Aziz as governor of al-Andalus. Musa and Tariq were never to return to the lands they had conquered. Musa and Tariq triumphantly entered Damascus, before meeting with Caliph al-Walid who was on the point of death. A few days later al-Walid died and was succeeded by his brother Sulayman, who demanded that Musa gave him all the spoils of war. Musa refused to do so, and Sulayman stripped him of his rank and confiscated the spoils anyway. The punishment didn’t end there, but we will see in the next episode how cruel destiny was with Musa ibn Nusayr. It’s kind of what happened to Hernán Cortés, they both lead epic conquests only to be suspected later by the rulers in whose names acted. However, the fate of Musa was much more tragic than that of Cortés. As for Tariq, we virtually know nothing about what happened after he arrived in Damascus, but it’s safe to say that he didn’t have a happy ending either.

Before going to The Verdict, I think it’s interesting to see how the success of the Muslim conquest was explained by both Christians and Muslims. For Muslims, the answer was simple: God had willed it. The Christians instead had to explain why God had abandoned them. Medieval chroniclers blamed the ruling Visigoths for their immorality. According to them, they were all to blame: the desire of power and glory of Roderic, the treachery of Oppas and Sisebut, the cowardice of the bishop of Toledo who fled to Rome, and the lust of King Wittiza, who had many concubines. Therefore, for Christians the sins of the Visigoths were what made God punish them with the invasion of the infidels.

THE VERDICT: In today’s verdict I want to discuss the common motivations that all conquests have. Religion has traditionally been a major reason, as it unites people and it gives warriors a higher moral cause, and this is true for both Muslims and the later fervent Christians. But religion is not a sufficient motivation, because if it was, there wouldn’t be conflicts among believers of the same faith. More mundane reasons are usually much more important. Conquerors risk their lives to enrich themselves, either through a salary, a share of booty, or new lands to settle. Conquerors also risk their lives for women, either to marry foreign women or to sexually enslave or rape them. And the other big reason is for prestige, glory and power. The deadly sins, such as lust, pride and greed, are the human factors that have shaped the world. And with that, The Verdict ends.

In the next episode I will cover the definitive conquest of the Visigothic Kingdom and the society of al-Andalus. To end this episode, let me remind you that the podcast has a website, thehistoryofspain.com, where you can find the scripts of the episodes, a list of books about the history of Spain and subscribe to the biweekly newsletter. Please subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube and more, review the podcast, and follow the social media accounts of Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. I hope you enjoyed the episode and thank you for listening!

Sources

EARLY MEDIEVAL SPAIN: UNITY IN DIVERSITY, 400-1000. Roger Collins

KINGDOMS OF FAITH. A NEW HISTORY OF ISLAMIC SPAIN. Brian A. Catlos

MUSLIM SPAIN AND PORTUGAL. Hugh Kennedy

HISTORIA DE LA ESPAÑA DE LA EDAD MEDIA. Vicente Ángel Álvarez Palenzuela

ESPAÑA 702-719: LA CONQUISTA MUSULMANA. Luis A. García Moreno

A HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL SPAIN. Joseph F. O’Callaghan

ESPAÑA MUSULMANA (SIGLOS VIII-XV). Rachel Arié

CONQUISTADORES, EMIRES Y CALIFAS: LOS OMEYAS Y LA FORMACIÓN DE AL-ÁNDALUS. Eduardo Manzano

LA CONQUISTA ÁRABE, 710-797. Roger Collins

NOTE: Credit for the intro and outro music to Jeris and Clarence Simpsons, the song is called ‘Conquistador’and it’s under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license