Frontier societies: Christian Spain, 711–1037

Abstract

The Arab and Berber conquest of the Iberian peninsula that had commenced in 711 had been extremely rapid. By 714 the conquerors had reached the Ebro valley, sacking Zaragoza, its principal city, and in 720 they crossed the Pyrenees, and eliminated a vestigial Visigothic kingdom centred on Narbonne. In part the lack of sustained resistance that they encountered prior to their first attacks on Aquitaine in 721 was a reflection of the previously peaceful and also relatively centralised nature of the Spanish Visigothic kingdom. There had not been the kind of external threats to the integrity of the realm in the seventh century that had been faced in the sixth, and unlike that of Francia, the society of Visigothic Spain had not needed to be one that was primarily organised for war. The Iberian peninsula also benefited from naturally defensible land frontiers, which were far removed from the principal court centre of Toledo.