Muslims never conquered Spain
- Thread starter Teejay
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And it's probable that the Muslims would have tried again, fighting with the Franks (assuming they did in fact beat the Visagothes).
You could see an earlier HRE, or a Frankish kingdom of Spain. Alternatively, the Muslims might beat the Franks, opening the whole continent up to Muslim incursion.
You could see an earlier HRE, or a Frankish kingdom of Spain. Alternatively, the Muslims might beat the Franks, opening the whole continent up to Muslim incursion.
Teejay
Gone Fishin'
The Franks managed to repulse the Muslims from France, the Frankish state was not weak like the Visigoth one was.
Teejay
Gone Fishin'
I thought the Arabs established the irrigation networks in Spain. Even in a Visigoth or Frankish ruled Spain, they would borrow useful technology from the Arabs.
I think that was a reference to a argument on this board (Faellin VS. Midgard) about Islam. Faelin was stating facts that Islam was not the Bad Guys (TM) of civilization, but a civilization, while Midgard said they were bad, dark, and kept saying the Byzantines were the best.
The Byzantines had already started to move. However they had never finished the job off because Justinian died and they didn't have to troops to hold Spain and the Balkans.
At the time of the Moor invasion, the Visigoths were not weak, just divided and not too popular with the non-Goths. Because of Roderic's coup a few years earlier, they did not present a united front. Had they done so, they would have driven the Moors back into the sea. Given the the Moorish commanders were not supposed to invade Spain without orders, and they had none, the Moors would have regrouped until a new Caliph took over.Teejay said:
That would give the Visigoths time to fortify the coastal towns as well as invade Morocco.
Not quite; by the time the Moors invaded Spain, most of the Visigoth aristocracy had already become Catholic.
There were still scattered numbers of Arianists, but the kingdom itself was already controlled by the Catholics.
And by the time the Muslims firmly controlled North Africa, the Byzantines already had enough problems with keeping the Muslim invaders out of their own territories in Asia and the islands of the Mediterranean, and regarding the fact that Justinian already horribly overstretched his empire with his invasions in Spain and Italy, it is very unlikely that the Byzantines would be capable of a successful invasion of Spain as long as the Muslims are in control of North Africa and keep frequently raiding the European coasts of the Mediterranean...
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As mentionede before in this thread, a muslim defeat against the visigoths could have these possible chain of events:- A temporal streghtening of the Visigothic monarchy under Roderic and could be his inmediat succesor.- Because the instability of the visigothic monarchy caused by the elective system and the presence of a strong nobility with territorial rights (some clear examples was that after the death of Roderic the visigothic resistance or capitulations against the muslims were made by local nobles that had great power in their respective regions: the most known example was Theodomir in the region of Murcia-Alicante-Albacete named by some sources Auriola and Pelayo in the Asturias region) there is a clear possibility of another civil war.- This civil war could be profited by the franks under Charles Martel or succesors to intervene in the Visigothic Kingdom, also there is a probability of intervention by a muslim-berber army in the civil war( we should have in count that the fact of the civil war of Abbasids against Umayyads could made this umprobable depending if the civil war longs more than in OTL or if some Umayyad could refuge in North Africa, also we should have in count that direct control over Magrib with the probable exception of the coast was rather weak by the central government of Damasco-Bagdad), in any case it seems that politically although the kingdom survives could end being some kind of frankish protectorate or divided between a Muslim Andalusia and a Visigothic kingdom protected by the franks.
Go with the first invader, not sure about the second. Given that a) generals were not supposed to invade without the Caliph's permission and b) the last invasion was a disaster for both the army and its commanders, any Muslim commander considering intervening will think twice.
However, if a defeated Spanish noble (Visigoth or otherwise) asked for help, it would almost certainly be looked at with interest. It would still have to be referred to the Caliph and I suspect that by the time he had finished saying yes and the Moors arrived, the Franks would have a fair whack of Spain under their dominion. They might even consider trying to push the "invaders" back into the sea.
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