Written by Emilio Luppino
Southern Europe, once ruled by a singular dominant force, fractured into a mosaic of barbarian kingdoms in the wake of Rome’s collapse.
The Visigothic Kingdom, from its start, seemed destined for illness.
When the Arian Goths settled in Spain, they sought an uneasy fusion with the Catholic aristocracy. Yet the upper class remained divided, and the monarchy—lacking a fixed law of succession—became a theatre of intrigue. The kings, beset by internal strife, struggled to muster a reliable army. These frailties can be traced back to the Germanic notion of the “tribe”—a political unit ill-suited to the complexities of ruling a land of cities and old imperial grandeur. Finally, stripped of their municipal privileges and left vulnerable to fresh invasions, the cities, wary and disillusioned, placed little trust in their new Gothic rulers.
In the spring of 712, beneath the heat of the Andalusian sun, thousands of men pressed their feet into the sands of southern Spain. Before the Goths could grasp what was unfolding, they had already lost their kingdom. Yet, unlike the barbarians who had once replaced the heirs of the She-wolf, the Arabs did not come as mere conquerors, nor as missionaries. The caliphate’s ambition was not to accumulate converts but to redraw the maps and borders around the Mediterranean Sea. Polytheists were, without exception, compelled to embrace Islam, but monotheists, the very figures who filled the texts recited by the advancing Arab soldiers, were granted the right to keep their faith.
The new rulers met little resistance, centuries of feuds and institutional collapse had dulled the instinct to rebel, and they soon started to set about shaping their new dominion. The Muslims allowed the locals to retain their own laws, the Visigothic codes, and though they reserved the right to intervene when these clashed with Islamic principles, in practice, they ruled with a light hand, leaving much of society to govern itself.
However, it would be unfair to depict the new management of former Hispania as an idyllic transition of power.
The Dhimmah, a set of laws governing relations between Muslims and non-Muslims, was imposed, dividing society as if sifted through a fine sieve, preserving only the chosen gems. Dhimmis, all those who were not Muslim, were bound by its dictates: they paid the special jizya tax, were required to wear distinctive clothing, and forbidden from publicly displaying their religion, holding ceremonies, or conducting funerals. Yet this was not mere discrimination, it was the foundation of the social contract upon which the Umayyad Caliphate rested. And like all the contracts it included checks and balances.
In return for the jizya, non-Muslims were granted protection of life and property. If Muslim rulers found themselves unable to defend themselves from an external threat, they were duty-bound to return the tax, a rare contract of obligation between ruler and ruled, forged in both pragmatism and power.
What set the Arab conquest apart from that of the Visigoths was its willingness, perhaps even its necessity, to collaborate with the existing society.
The imposition of the Dhimmah had initially sought to keep Muslims apart from other religious groups, yet it soon became evident that such isolation was untenable. Muslim soldiers grew familiar with the land, and Spain was no longer seen as a mere stopover on the road to further conquests, but as a home—a place to settle, rather than simply to rule.
Moreover, wherever they went, Muslims remained a minority. They lacked the administrative expertise, linguistic fluency, and cultural knowledge to govern effectively. Like a family moving into a new house, they had yet to learn how to navigate its rooms. A cultural process was thus set in motion. The Arab aristocracy began to engage with Christian and Jewish theology and ascetic traditions, though not as deeply as in Persia. Christian youths, captivated by Arabic poetry, struggled to compose proper Latin. Intermarriage blurred the lines between conqueror and conquered, giving rise to the muwalladūn, non-Arabs raised in Arab customs and language.
The cultural blossoms of the Umayyad court, with its dazzling wealth and promise of financial opportunity, drew admiration and, among some Christian radicals, alarm. They lamented that their fellow Christians had become enamoured with the trappings of Arab rule, adopting Islamic attire, customs, and even the practice of circumcision.
Yet for all this exchange, the cultural current largely flowed in one direction. While Christians, Jews, and other minorities absorbed much from Islamic civilization, the Arab ruling class took in far less from the Latin heritage of those they governed. And if the Dhimmah served as a mechanism for both protection and integration, reinforcing the presence of minorities within the new Arab society, it remained, at its core, a reminder of their second-class status.
Islamic law, for instance, forbade a husband from forcing his wife to convert, yet it dictated that the children of a mixed marriage must follow their father’s faith. To radical Christians, this was a slow erosion of their community, a creeping transformation they met with scorn. Women who married Muslims were cast as the worst kind of traitors—symbols of a faith slipping, family by family, into the hands of the conquerors.
And so, the Islamic invasion of Spain stands as a tale of conquest by endurance. It is the story of a ruling class pragmatic enough to merge with the local society in order to secure its dominance, and of an impotent populace unable to prevent its own culture from being diluted and absorbed into a new order.
Bibliography
“Jizyah | Definition & Facts | Britannica.” n.d. http://Www.britannica.com. https://www.britannica.com/topic/jizya#ref1282958.
Coope, Jessica A. The Martyrs of Córdoba : Community and Family Conflict in an Age of Mass Conversion. Lincoln, Neb: University of Nebraska Press, 1995.
Peacock, A. C. S. (Andrew C. S.), ed. Islamisation : Comparative Perspectives from History. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2021.
Watt, W. Montgomery (William Montgomery), and Pierre Cachia. A History of Islamic Spain. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007.
Featured Image Credit: The mosaic-decorated mihrab (center) and the interlacing arches of the maqsura (left and right) in the extension added by al-Hakam II after 961 via Wiki Commons.
Retrospect Journal 
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