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Oddities, Misconceptions, and Facts About the Middle Ages that Made it So Delightfully Strange

Khalid Elhassan April 6, 2022 36 min

Middle Ages Facts - Disposal of Black Death victims — Disposal of Black Death victims. Science

16. The Man Who Conquered Spain for the Islamic World

Artistic rendering of Tariq ibn Ziyad. Quora

Middle Ages general Tariq ibn Ziyad (died circa 720) was a Berber who led the Muslim conquest of Visigothic Hispania, today’s Iberian Peninsula. He was a trusted slave of North Africa’s Muslim governor, Musa bin Nusayr, who appointed Tariq governor of Tangier in 710. There, he was approached by a Visigoth nobleman from nearby Ceuta, incensed and out for revenge because the Visigoth King Roderic had raped his daughter. He allied with Tariq, and arranged to ship him and a small army of about 7000 men to Hispania.

Tariq crossed from North Africa into Spain in 711. There, he established a beachhead in today’s Gibraltar – a Spanish derivation of “Jabal Tariq“, or “Mountain of Tariq” – which is named after him. After he secured Gibraltar, Tariq reportedly burned his fleet to drive home to his men that there was no possibility of retreat, and that the choices before them were either victory or death. Then, from Gibraltar as a base of operations, Tariq proceeded to subjugate the territory of today’s Spain and Portugal, which he sought to conquer on behalf of the Umayyad Caliphate.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.