The Conquest of Hispania - The Moors of Andalusia - EP 3 P 1 WOTW

[Music] welcome back to another episode of flashpoint histories War of the Worlds this is episode 3 the Moors of Andalusia in our last episode we talked about how the Islamic conquest finally managed to take out all of North Africa and in this episode that expansion continues into the rich lands of Spain as the armies of the Caliphate extend the Empire's borders to the edges of the known world [Music] we are gonna begin this episode with the story of a people that had been displaced there was once a great nation that as Shakespeare would one day say of Julius Caesar would be stride the world like a giant Colossus its people were initially hard-working and industrious committed and pragmatic their resourcefulness allowed them to grow from a small city-state known as Rome to a vast territory that incorporated hundreds if not thousands of cultures and ethnicities now this wasn't going to be an easy path every Avenue in Road and field was stained with blood as the fledgling Republic had to fight her way to dominance but along the way and you can even argue that this was a consequence of her own success driven and uncompromising and add to this ruthless men changed that Republic into an empire she was now driven by a single emperor which would have been the antithesis of her founders of course with good leaders the Empire would flourish but with bad ones the Empire would begin to crack the people that the Romans had come to dominate waited like jackals at the periphery of a campfire awaiting that time to strike and by the third and fourth century the Common Era the fire of civilization or subjugation depending on how you looked at it that was the Pax Romana began to ebb and with the dimming of that light barbarians began to appear on the horizon their voices like their armies growing in strength all wanting their peace of a once mighty Empire the barbarians that came had a lot of names the Vandals the Allens the Huns but amongst these invaders was a group called the visi Goths the Visigoths were once an agricultural tribe that lived in an area that would one day be the country of Romania they were however attacked by the Huns and as they say one doesn't know true fear unless you've been on the business end of a Hanukkah tack they were forced to flee they went south to the border of the Roman Empire which was then demarcate adrift Danube an Emperor Valens who was the main man in charge at this point seeing this as an opportunity to expand the potential manpower for his army and incorporate a new ally the Romans would call this a federate I allowed them to cross the river and settle into Roman territory but his subordinates seeing this as a chance to exploit a displaced and refugee people you know the type of people that really didn't have any other options instigated harsh and insanely cruel terms they were the slum Lords of the worst variety and when the Visigoths couldn't pay the rent or afford I don't know food in some cases were forced to sell their own children into slavery in order to make ends meet they were forced to live in just deplorable conditions denied weapons and repressed in a multitude of ways but like with many other examples of human resilience their spirit was not diminished and eventually they rallied together and under a leader named Fred again were able to fight back on August 9th in the year 378 Valens who was now eager for victory and to crush this upstart rebellion rushed in his exhausted troops to take on what he thought was a much smaller barbarian army but he was deceived and by his own Scouts nonetheless they failed to spot the Visigoths cavalry the Battle of adren ople which is one of those notable battles in the decline and fall of the Roman Empire found the Roman army surprised fritter and had ordered a smokescreen created by burning the scrub grassland and from this goth Horseman appeared seemingly from nowhere unaware and thus unprepared the Roman cavalry was quickly routed from the field and the Roman infantry found itself attacked on both flanks by enemy cavalry just as the main body of the Visigoths army came barreling down into them Roman historians estimated that two-thirds of their army was lost but you know I'm guessing that the real number was likely higher as they probably want to downplay their massive defeat but what the Romans couldn't hide that day was that Valens the Emperor himself was killed alongside his men this defeat would be a big one for the Empire and you know the way I looked at it this was just the beginning of karma the Romans knew that they now had to play nice or at least respect the Visigoths a little bit more and allowed them to settle in the Balkans in exchange for Manning the role of guard duty along the frontier but the Visigoths knew that they couldn't trust the Romans I mean would you then again waited for their moment to strike when the great empire was split into two with the death of Emperor Theodosius the first in 379 the eastern and western halves were weakened the Visigoths began to move again down south and eventually into Italy and meeting only scant resistance along the way they marched on the city of Rome and in 410 sacked and then plundered the one spectacular capital and by the way this was the first time in 800 years that the sanctity of Rome was violated the Western Empire was indeed crumbling Emperor enorus who if you look in the pantheon of great emperors of Roman history you're not gonna find him realized that the goth actually had some sort of battlefield utility he made a treaty with them offered them a considerable amount of cash and then sent them into the Iberian Peninsula to deal with the Germanic tribes that had already overrun what was once a Roman province the Visigoths who were now a military power to be recognized made short work of these tribes and were then duly awarded with lands in southern Gaul but their days and France were to be numbered as another Germanic tribe known as the Franks muscled their way in the Visigoths now proceeded to move down into Spain for good of course this move wasn't going to be without some sort of challenge I mean after all we are talking about the early Middle Ages here we're just about ever everyone was out for some carnage the Romans of the Eastern Empire to be named later the Byzantine would later try to retake Spain under their auspicious and very capable Emperor Justinian but this attempt was eventually turned back because the Visigoths were getting organized in 568 there was a goth king named ali ova guild who came to power he fought the Romans and many of the local tribes even put down a revolt that was led by his own son in order to bring a majority of Spain under Visigoths rule and he managed all this by the year 586 the government structure that was implemented was surprisingly stable and would last for approximately a hundred and fifty years of course there were problems that were inherent to its design as the king was usually elected by the nobility a dynastic structure you know where the king would put his own son in place after him was only tolerated sparingly so every time the king would die or more likely be found murdered and then dumped into the nearest river because being a goth king was something that had the capacity to be hazardous to one's health the country would then have the potential to go into civil war or there'd be a considerable amount of infighting it was one of those situations where the nobles would await a weakened rival to show them the meaning of mortality Visigoths Spain was a proto feudal society where her kings would try to incorporate some of the remnants of the governing style of the old Roman Empire but the armies which were in many cases local militia were led by a local Lord that in theory at least would then band together to fight opposition to the kingdom as a whole but again these forces would retain loyalty to their own local leader so at this point I want you to take a minute and imagine what Spain was like this is one of those close your eyes and imagine moments you know as long as you're not like operating a vehicle after all this was a major transition point we all seem to have it engrained in our minds to think of civilization to be is relentlessly improving you know in one direction what most would call progress but instead with the fall of the Roman Empire we were entering into what some would consider to be the Dark Ages for civilization and I use that term in the broadest sense possible it can be argued that this was a step backwards his Fania became something like a post-apocalyptic movie ok maybe not quite so harsh and definitively more drawn-out in terms of time you didn't have zombies walking around but instead what you had was a loss of the high society and technology that she once enjoyed under the Romans as a whole she went into decline and on multiple fronts her agricultural abilities diminished as she lost the technologies to maintain irrigation systems and to farm the land the population was also ravaged by infighting and barbarian attacks and plagued her economy turned inwards and small as the markets that she once had within the framework of the Roman Empire became too dangerous or perilous to engage in mining was gonna be another area that wasn't gonna do very well I mean after all this was one of the major reasons that a lot of people came to the peninsula it was very rich in silver and the Romans had mined the land to a level that would not be rivaled until the time of the Industrial Revolution now it goes without saying that infrastructure was also going to take a hit roads and bridges and canals were also neglected and in some places abandoned altogether but despite all these problems Spain remained a cosmopolitan place her population now included Greek Carthaginian Roman Celt Celt Iberian Lusitania and now gothic influences as a whole she remains strong up until about the Year 710 in the Year 710 is when we start to hit some major political upheaval it was in this year that the Visigoths King what tizi died and his son Aquila was next in line to take power now records of the time period are not in hi early clear what exactly happened it is known however that a prominent nobleman named Roderick swooped down to claim the throne Roderick was a Duke of a large area in southern Spain known as beta he moved quickly and in some accounts had himself proclaimed king and before anybody could actually do anything about it his move however engendered considerable resentment and split the kingdom news of this discord spread fast especially into the ears of the Muslims who at this point had just completed the conquest of North Africa and the Maghreb and more importantly were only a short distance to the south now while Spain was essentially descending into civil war just a small straight of water away in what will one day be the country of Morocco and of course unbeknownst to Roderick in the rest of the visigoths kingdom was a man by the name of Musa ibn new sierre he was the governor of North Africa at this point a man that was both a commander and a politician it was he that captured Tangier and solidified the rule at the Caliphate in North Africa but he wasn't always a man of lofty status it was said that his father was taken prisoner in 633 when the Muslim conquest came to mesopotamia his father was made a slave which of course sucks but as far as slavery goes he kinda lucked out as he was placed under the servitude of Abdul Aziz even Marwan who just happened to be the governor of Egypt and for good measure the son of the then reigning caliph mooses father must have done something right abdul aziz granted him freedom it became his esteemed patron promoting him up the line musa grew up rubbing elbows with the upper echelon and was eventually made co governor of iraq but he had a falling out over matters of money and nearly lost his head in the process this wasn't gonna be the end of our guy he was given a chance at redemption by abdul aziz who paid off his debts and then put him to the task of subjugating Africa Musa threw himself into the job it is said that he led a brutal conquest enslaving some three hundred thousand people along the way yet history also remembers him as being a man a compromise he knew that too strict a policy of control would only cause the indigenous people to rise in revolt again like they had done to his predecessor and so he used the carrot as well as this stick he respected the customs of the Berbers enticing them rather than forcing them to join using dear God diplomacy which worked wonders strange how a bit of mutual acknowledgement can just go such a long way the Berbers began to convert to Islam liking the idea of the sense of equality that it offered and started signing up for the army just in droves and not just as enlisted men but also as officers one of the most famous of these officers was tot ik even zyad who was installed as governor a Tangier after it was taken in 708 there are conflicting stories on his ethnicity but many historians feel he was one of the Berbers who musa freed from slavery and then convinced him to join the ranks of the muslim army this must have been one of those paying it forward count of moments again tarik must have done something right because he rose to prominence very quickly by 709 to 7 North Africa was under the rule of the Caliphate and by now reports must have been reaching these two men that Spain was in a state of disorder the nature of the Islamic conquest was that it needed new lands to plunder and this must have made the peninsula a ripe target plus the lands to the south were arid and very unpromising so if you had a choice to battle fierce people and then end up claiming a chunk of the Sahara or battle fierce people and claim a chunk of fertile land in Spain well the choice was easy which way you're gonna go some say however that the reason for invasion and this could be completely myth or folklore again the records of this time period are not exactly complete and the exact timeline may be off the dates that I'm giving you by the way are based on the most likely consensus but in any case it was about 7/10 in the city as say Utah or an ex Byzantine governor named count Julian lived this man had an axe to grind and Hugh Kennedy picks up his tail Hugh Kennedy by the way in his version he's paraphrasing a more contemporary chronicler and he refers to King Roderick as Rodrigo quote according to the chronicler Tariq wrote to Julian paying him compliments and exchanging presents not Julian had sent his daughter to Rodrigo the visigoth king of Spain for her education and instruction and Rodrigo had made her pregnant when this news reached Julian he said I do not see how I can punish him or pay him back except by sending the Arabs against him he then goes on to describe out Julian started to transport some of the men one evening and since his ships back to the African coast to bring more than next Tariq came in the last boat and the fleet remained at al his sidess which is one of the port cities while the Muslim army marched north it is impossible to know whether there is any truth in this story or indeed whether Julian ever existed it does not come from the usual repertoire of Arabic conquest narratives however it may reflect the reality of a widespread discontent with Rodrigo's kingship end quote it was approximately April of the year 711 that Tariq was commanded to take his army across into Spain his force was a very modest seven thousand men because he got to keep in mind this was initially more of a reconnaissance and force or a raid rather than a full-blown invasion these men were comprised mostly of Berbers again the indigenous inhabitants of the Maghreb and as a side note as many of these soldiers had come from what was once the Roman province of North Africa which was named Mara Tanya this is of course where we get the term Moors also as a side note as Tariq made his way from Tangier he quickly spotted in the distance a great mountain the water which as any good Conqueror would do he named it after himself jabal is the Arabic word for mountain and so this mountain became known as Jabal Altaic the mountain of tonic come on admit it you do the same thing Jabal al tarik is of course where we get the derivation of the mountains modern name which is Gibraltar with his seven thousand men he crossed into southern Spain and landed near the port city of allahís ayahs now as I've mentioned this was initially to be considered large raid and Tariq kept his men near the coast and by the port in case they needed to be evacuated his presence was swiftly noted by the Visigoths roderick was at this time campaigning to secure his kingdom he was up in northern Spain in Navarre you know in Basque Country attempting to bring the steadfast and resilient Basque in the line but upon hearing of the new invaders he disengaged his attack and pressed his army south now the reports are not consistent in regards to these size of his force the upper-end estimates being in the hundred thousand range which is just crazy more likely he welded about thirty to forty thousand men he moved down to the capital city of Toledo where he was reinforced by some of his Nobles who brought along their own private armies and then together at the head of this magnificent combined multitude which easily outnumbered his opponent he marched confidently on to fight the Moors the man was in his moment however there is a legend that surrounds King Roderick which most likely is propaganda that was written much later it's one of these too good to be true kind of things but at the very least it makes for a very compelling read and there are many versions of this story ago something like this quote a king of Spain in ancient times built a tower in which he deposited a secret he sealed a tower with a mighty padlock and laid upon his successors the obligation each my turns to add an extra padlock so as to ever more enviable whatever was concealed within 26 Kings came and went respecting his wishes then there succeeded rash and the headstrong young king named Roderick resolved to penetrate the tower secret and against the advice of all of his councillors he had the 27 padlocks opened he then entered the chamber within and upon its walls were painted Arab horsemen scimitars at their belts spears brandished in their right hands in the middle of the room stood a table made of gold and silver set with precious stones upon it carved the words this is the table a King Solomon son of David upon whom be peace there was an urn on the table which was found to contain a scroll of parchment when this was unrolled the following words were revealed whenever this chamber is violated and the spell contained in this urn is broken the people painted on these walls will invade Spain overthrow its kings and subdue the entire land end quote so going back for a second Roderick and the Visigoths army continued heading toward the Moors Tariq meanwhile kept his forces in the south and upon hearing of this incoming force requested reinforcements Musa eben knew cierres sent in another five thousand troops to bring Tareq's fighting strength to about twelve thousand but still even with these additional forces he was still vastly outnumbered now the exact location as well as the exact date of the Battle of Guadalupe as it was gonna be known is still a bit hazy some say it happened in the year 712 the Arabic sources have it pinned down to July 19th in the year 711 what he's kind of known is that it occurred someplace around the city of Cadiz the battle played out something like this Roderick spotted taric's forces positioned on a high ground awaiting him they were kind of up on a hill and when the Visigoths King saw this he sent his army into a broad frontal attack hoping to dislodge the enemy and let the of his superior numbers do its thing but halfway to the enemy his nobleman his allied people basically halted their own private forces if you recall all the local Lords within a Visigoths Kingdom had their own loyal troops so these guys basically just sat back and watched as Roderick in the main Visigoths army plowed uphill and right into tarick's forces alone it would seem that the hatred and animosity that Roderick had created had finally caught up with him the Berber Arab force while being outnumbered were able to compensate for this they held the high ground and were comprised of a hardened veterans of many campaigns they knew the essence of how to make an enemy bleed they were professional in making short work of the Goths who now found their flanks exposed this couldn't have worked out better for the Muslim force and part of me still feels that they must have made some sort of deal with the Visigoths Nobles ahead of time but the results were the same Roderick his army his Nobles at least the ones that were still loyal to him in one day were all wiped out this defeat of Roderick in his army Aguada let a essentially crippled Visigoths resistance the kingdom suddenly found itself on the proverbial ropes and if this reversal of fortune seems a bit odd keep in mind you're dealing with a more feudal society with more limited resources and reserves and you would have what safe like the Roman Empire you know the Romans had this amazing ability to take defeat after defeat after defeat like they had it trasimeno or canny and they just kept bringing in more manpower and reserves feudal states on the other hand and this is a general terms kind of statement here some of the bigger nation-states that occur later on down the line defy this rule but usually they only have one major army to contend with military threats and its destruction was ruinous and again if it seems strange that a single defeat can be so catastrophic know that this scenario was not alone there's other examples that have a very similar vibe for example the Battle of Hastings in 1066 who are Harold and his Saxon army are just pummeled by William the Conqueror and his Normans who then proceeded to blitzkrieg and take over all in England to give you another example the Battle of Hattin on July 4th 1187 Saladin mops the floor with the Crusader army leaving the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem an easy target Salah add-in will quickly go onwards to conquer the rest of the Levant including Jerusalem well except for a few coastal cities which he would later regret but the point is is that he faced limited resistance after this initial confrontation so in light of current events tarik moved quickly according to one Chronicle and this may not be entirely true he was aided by count Julian if you remember he's the one who sent his daughter to Roderick in the first place to get her education and Roderick at least according to the records was then responsible for deflowering her Julian at this point basically acted like a GPS he gave the Muslims a layout of the land tarik using this information decided to move to the north where he took the city of Ecija he then divided his forces sending one of his cavalry commanders a one Moog Heath with a mere 700 men to take Cordoba when he arrived at this city Mook Heath began to interrogate the locals who revealed to him that there were holes in the city walls that were big enough for a man to climb through which is exactly what he and his force did they managed to surprise and then kill off most of the garrison and the remaining defenders retreated to a church which they fortified into a citadel these poor men held out for approximately three months all the while under siege but when they realized that no one was coming to rescue them they promptly surrendered I'm guessing that these men didn't have a very happy ending however the point I'm trying to make is that the visigothic kingdom was so poorly defended that even a handful of men could take a city and to emphasize this Tariq meanwhile pushed onto the capital city of Toledo which at this point had been largely abandoned he took the city and secured the land around it he then stationed his men there for the winter of seven eleven to seven twelve and if you think about it this is not a bad campaigning season this is what a general would call a very auspicious beginning now during this time musa had been noosa air was sitting back in north africa and watching Tareq put on his dazzling performance he had after all captured a port city and taken Cordoba and secured the capital and of course took out a Visigoths army Tariq had basically taken a raid and turned it into a war of conquest and had managed not to die horribly in the process Musa now realized that he was missing out on what was turning into a very lucrative affair and so he mobilized 18,000 men experienced veterans mind you and in June of 712 he brought these men into the port city of Al has Sierras you know much like Tariq had done before him now he spent this summer securing the southern tip of Spain and then advanced to Seville and finally onwards to meridah meridah being a substantial city took a considerable amount of time via siege in fact the entire winter of seven twelve to seven thirteen to conquer and with a considerable amount of bloodshed other areas opted to do it the easy way they were given a diplomatic option like the governor Theo de Mer of Murcia which have also heard as mafia which is an area in southeastern Spain he was given a treaty when the terms were fairly benign he was given autonomy and the option for religious tolerance in exchange for paying his taxes on time which of course beats being killed and for the Arabs it allowed them freedom to move on to other targets you know in corporate America we call this a win-win scenario Theo de mer also really didn't have much of a choice it was said that he had to dress his women in soldiers garb to give the appearance that his cities were actually defended so after this successful campaign season now be it it was a bit bloody Musa eventually joined up with Tariq in Toledo after exchanging the necessary pleasantries they got down to the awkward affair of resolving who got what in terms of spoils it was about now that Musa really had to pull rank apparently they got into a real spat over the jeweled table that I mentioned earlier the you know the one that was considered to be the table of Solomon after a lot of back and forth Musa ultimately got it but now before Tariq managed to pull off one of the legs and replace it with a more rudimentary variant you know it got really childish but luckily nobody got their eye poked out after Musa essentially got the lion's share and the two men hugged and made up they set off to the northeast and 714 to capture the Ebro River Valley and then they went on to take out Zaragoza in Leo Dada and Barcelona or barthelona however they didn't stop there they crossed the Pyrenees and took a chunk of southern France called NAR bone the thought process here was that this area would be a launching pad for further conquest as it became readily apparent to both men that there were still lands to be plundered on the other side of the mountains so let me ask you this if you were a war correspondent at this point in history what would you report back at this point good chance is that you'd probably say that the conquest was going great you know metals all around kind of thing now the average person out there if you do a fantastic job at whatever it is that you do there's a good chance that you're gonna get some sort of recognition and if you're really lucky you might even get promoted however news of Tariq and Musa success began to worry that Calif who issued a command to recall both men back to Damascus he was concerned and perhaps rightfully so that Musa was going to go ahead and carve out a kingdom for himself indeed as Musa left Spain he placed his own son Abdul Aziz even Musa in charge which some can argue was the beginning of a dynastic structure in late 714 perhaps early 715 Muhsin tonic made the extended journey back to Damascus the Calif who had just come to power at the time was Suleiman even Abdul Malik who let's just say that he didn't have that warm fuzzy Center for Musa as many of his predecessor caliphs had Suleiman who straight out just didn't like Musa stripped him of all of his titles and spoils and rendered him at least in some stories a complete and total beggar abandoned by all including his servants but this wasn't gonna be the final statement of mooses last days more on that in a bit as for Tariq he simply disappeared from the record and I'm willing to guess his retirement let's call it wasn't exactly a benign one going back to Spain for a second in his absence mooses son Abdul Aziz continued the conquest to Spain bringing most of Lusitania which is what we think of as modern-day Portugal and the northwestern areas such as Leone under his control it was at this point that he began to cash in on the perks of his success Abdul Aziz eventually found himself married to King Roderick's widowed wife in some accounts this woman is actually Roderick's daughter which would probably make more sense if one is attempting to establish a lineage and the goal is to produce offspring which ever it was the First Lady of Spain convinced him to inherit Visigoths customs you know hold on to a scepter have people prostrate themselves in front of you adorn yourself in Regal clothing and she even convinced him to wear a crown this was too much for his Arab and Berber supporters and when the Caliph Suleiman again the man who brought down Musa heard about this he put out a hit on Abdul Aziz was thus promptly assassinated and if the tale is to be true he wasn't just killed he was decapitated his head put into a jar of vinegar and then shipped back to Damascus and check this out when he got back there Sulaiman held at lavish feast for his father Musa dragging him out of the gutter for a night and during the meal in the midst of dinner conversation the Calif presented abdel aziz 'as head to him on a silver platter talk about driving home a point in a kind of insanely cruel way okay so meanwhile far to the west the conquest of Spain was entering into a more consolidated phase much like the conquest of Persia the Muslims would first take the main cities and roads and then slowly expanded to the more rural areas by 716 is 720 most of Spain was taken and while this was going on more and more settlers were coming in the Arabs would tend to settle in the more urban areas and the Berbers would choose more pastoral grounds but in the north in the Kitab Rhian mountains and the Pyrenees the indigenous peoples of places like Astoria Sand Cantabria and Navarre put up a fierce defense and managed to maintain their independence the Muslim conquest was never really able to penetrate this area or if it did they didn't really stay for very long in fact any conflict that repulsed the invaders was immediately glorified and made headline news at the Battle of covadonga and 717 or 718 again the records are not exact some claim it happened as late as 722 a Visigoths noble who was being hunted by the Moors for inciting rebellion some say he might have been actually a member of King Roderick's court his name was Pelayo and he managed to band together the people of the mountains together under his banner and he went on to oppose and then defeat what was considered a massive and I say that with quotes a massive Muslim force that came after him which if some of the sources are to be believed consisted of an army of over a hundred and fifty thousand Moors which is owned shortly made up to sensationalize and add some sort of drama polios fight I will give you this and the resilience of the people of the northern mountains did establish a strong Christian bastion in the north later historians even regard his exploits and the exploits of those people as the beginnings of a Reconquista which is completely overblown the Battle of Covadonga was probably a modest battle at best and the concept of reconquest at least in terms of a broad religious event was centuries away this whole event was likely inflated as propaganda by later historians I guess if you look at it from the perspective of the Visigoths who were on the decisively losing end of this invasion any victory especially if it's considered a Christian one is going to make it into the history books

Channel: Flash Point History

Views: 285,658

Keywords: Islamic, conquest, muslim, War, worlds, Flash, point, history, moors, andalusia, musa, ibn, nusayr, tariq, ziyad, guadalete, battle, roderic, king, visigoth, witiza, tower, toledo, cordoba, navarre, basque, reconquista, covadonga, pelayo, toulouse, autun, damascus, umayyad, caliphate, caliph, charles, martel, hammer, poitier, tours, spain, alandalus, charlemagne

Id: rr-6omka00Y

Length: 37min 20sec (2240 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 07 2017