HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE PART II

HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE PART II

n the spring of the year AD 711, the Visigothic kingdom of Iberia was invaded and conquered by an army from the nearby Muslim Empire. This invasion and the ensuing conquest of the region the Arabs called Al-Andalus were only small portions of the aggressive Islamic expansion which was taking place across the known world. Although there were obvious similarities between the events of Arab conquest which took place in Iberia and those in other regions, Spain stands out in several dramatic ways. This paper will discuss five specific areas of the eighth century conquest and occupation in which one finds certain facets of Iberian uniqueness: 1) The composition of the Muslim invasion force; 2) Some Arab occupational policies; 3) The rebellion of Abd al-Aziz against the Caliph; 4) The formation of the realm of Asturias; and 5) The transformation of Al-Andalus into the Umayyad Caliphate

Despite the fact that this large-scale mercenary recruitment proved extremely effective for the purposes of the invasion of Iberia, it was not repeated on any significant scale in Al-Andalus itself. This may have been because the local inhabitants of Spain did not possess the tribal organization of the Berbers. Without that structure, “the mobilization of Spanish resources of manpower, as in the case of those from many other parts of the Arab Empire, would have required a more complex form of integration into the society of the conquerors.”