Battle of the Guadalete River

Battle of the Guadalete River

Part of: Islamic Expansion

date	July 19, 711 to July 26, 711
place	at Arcos de la Frontera
output	Arab victory

Parties to the conflict
Visigoths	Moors ( Arabs and Berbers )
Commander
Roderich †	Tariq ibn Ziyad
Troop strength
unknown	allegedly 12,000
losses
unknown	unknown

The Battle of the Río Guadalete in southern Andalusia was fought in July 711 between the invading army of Arabs and Berbers and the Visigoths and ended with the latter's defeat. This defeat was decisive for the further course of the fighting and led to the fall of the Visigoth Empire and the conquest of the Iberian Peninsula by the Moors in the course of the following years. This battle is also known as the Battle of Jerez de la Frontera .

Course and consequences

The sources for the battle on the Río Guadalete are brief and sometimes unclear. The date is more or less certain: the battle began on July 19, 711 and lasted eight days until July 26. The exact place of the slaughter is unknown, it is probably south of Arcos de la Frontera ( province of Cádiz ).

The Muslim army, consisting largely of Berbers, led by Tāriq ibn Ziyād , had crossed the Strait of Gibraltar in the spring of 711 and thus penetrated the Iberian Peninsula (see Islamic expansion ). It is unclear whether a conquest of the area was planned from the start, or whether the Muslims were more concerned with securing North Africa. At this time the Visigoth king Roderich was on a campaign against the Basques in the north; from there he moved to ward off the Muslim invasion. According to information from late Arab sources, the Muslim army numbered 12,000 men, which is a perfectly plausible figure for this period; the Visigoth contingent is said to have been considerably stronger (numbers of up to 100,000 men are given), but this information is controversial, as the Arab authors tended to exaggerate the strength of their opponents; such a large army could hardly have been supplied at that time. What is certain is that the defeat of the defenders was devastating and that King Roderich fell in battle. The remnants of the Gothic force fled north. They took Roderich's body with them and buried him in the city of Viseu in what is now northern Portugal. Roderich's former spatharius Pelagius ( Pelayo ) was able to defend a small, impassable area in the north of the Iberian Peninsula, which much later became the starting point of the Reconquista , but most of the country fell to the attackers for centuries after the defeat of 711.

Background and legend

Roderich had only been proclaimed Visigothic king or rex in 710 , whereby the sons of his predecessor Witiza were passed over. The election was not unanimous, and the defeated supporters of the Witizas family apparently took an oppositional stance in the period that followed; However, there was no civil war between them and Roderich's party; instead, the supporters of the opposition fought with the king against the attackers on the Río Guadalete. A statement in the Mozarabic Chronicle about an internal conflict among the Visigoths relates to the time after Roderich's death.

Christian medieval historians claimed from 9/10. Century on, the destruction of the Visigoth Empire was caused by treason . According to her, the sons of Witizas invited the Muslims to the invasion and supported their advance in order to get revenge on Roderich, who had deprived them of the line of succession. However, as a thorough source-critical investigation has shown in the meantime, this entire tradition is a tendentious invention. The treacherous legend was mainly spread by an Asturian source group, which also otherwise offers verifiably false information with which Witiza's family is put in a bad light. Later medieval historiography is based on this tradition.

This treacherous legend also circulated in the Islamic part of the Iberian Peninsula. It is first attested there by the historian Abū Bakr ibn al-Qūṭīya (Abenalcotia), who died in 977 and who wrote a "story of the conquest of al-Andalus". He was a descendant of Alamund, the eldest of Witiza's three sons. Ibn al-Qūṭīya relates that Witiza's sons were minors when their father died. At the time of the Muslim invasion, however, they had already been able to ride and were therefore asked by Roderich to take part in the battle of the Río Guadalete. The day before the battle, they had jointly decided to commit treason and contacted Tāriq for that purpose. They agreed to change the front with him after he had assured them that they would be allowed to keep their father's huge possessions. The following morning they defected with their troops to the Muslims, and this was the cause of the fall of the Visigoth Empire. Later, Caliph al-Walīd I received the three sons of Witiza and concluded a contract with each of them in which he confirmed Tariq's promises. As far as we know today, this is also a free invention.

literature

• Dietrich Claude : Investigations into the fall of the Visigoth Empire (711-725) . In: Historisches Jahrbuch , Vol. 108, 1988, pp. 329–358.
• Claudio Sánchez-Albornoz: Orígenes de la nación española , vol. 1, Oviedo 1972.

Remarks

1. ^ Ploetz, excerpt from history ", Würzburg, 1976, p. 494 or in: Dictionary of battles, sieges and meetings of all peoples ..., Volume 3 by Franz Georg Friedrich von Kausler, 1829, google e-book, books. google.de/books?id=pJ5DAAAAcAAJ
2. ↑ On the dating of Claudio Sánchez-Albornoz: Orígenes de la nación española , Vol. 1, Oviedo 1972, pp. 370, 392–412.
3. ↑ For localization see the detailed study by Claudio Sánchez-Albornoz: Orígenes de la nación española , Vol. 1, Oviedo 1972, pp. 271–317 (with map p. 311).
4. ↑ For the credibility of the statement of 12,000 men for the Muslim army, Dietrich Claude pleads: Investigations on the fall of the Visigoth Empire (711–725) . In: Historisches Jahrbuch , Vol. 108, 1988, pp. 329–358, here: 346 note 66. Roger Collins : Visigothic Spain 409–711 , Malden (MA) 2004, p. 141, assumes a much smaller number.
5. ↑ Claudio Sánchez-Albornoz: Orígenes de la nación española , Vol. 1, Oviedo 1972, pp. 330–333; Dietrich Claude: Investigations into the fall of the Visigoth Empire (711-725) . In: Historisches Jahrbuch , Vol. 108, 1988, pp. 329–358, here: 352.
6. ↑ Chronica Muzarabica 43, ed. Juan Gil, Corpus Scriptorum Muzarabicorum Vol. 1, Madrid 1973, p. 31; for the interpretation Dietrich Claude: Investigations into the fall of the Visigoth Empire (711-725) . In: Historisches Jahrbuch , Vol. 108, 1988, pp. 329–358, here: 345.
7. ↑ Chronica Muzarabica 45, ed. Juan Gil, Corpus Scriptorum Muzarabicorum Vol. 1, Madrid 1973, p. 32: dum ... non solum hostili, verum etiam intestino furore confligeretur.
8. ↑ Dietrich Claude provided evidence of the unbelievability: Investigations into the fall of the Visigoth Empire (711–725) . In: Historisches Jahrbuch , Vol. 108, 1988, pp. 329–358, here: 330, 343–352. Alexander Pierre Bronisch comes to the same conclusion with a slightly different argument: Reconquista and Holy War. The interpretation of the war in Christian Spain from the Visigoths to the early 12th century , Münster 1998, pp. 264–267, 272–275.
9. ↑ On this version of the treachery legend, see Ann Christys: How the royal house of Witiza survived the Islamic conquest of Spain . In: Walter Pohl, Maximilian habenberger (ed.): Integration und Herrschaft , Vienna 2002, pp. 233–246.