Roderic - War With The Arabs

War With The Arabs

According to the Chronicle of 754, Roderic immediately upon securing his throne gathered a force to oppose the Arabs and Berbers (Mauri) who were raiding in the south of the Iberian peninsula and had destroyed many towns under Tariq ibn Ziyad and other Muslim generals. While later Arabic sources make the conquest of Hispania a singular event undertaken at the orders of the governor Musa ibn Nosseyr of Ifriqiya, according to the Chronicle, which was written much nearer in date to the actual events, the Arabs began disorganised raids and only undertook to conquer the peninsula with the fortuitous death of Roderic and the collapse of the Visigothic nobility. Paul the Deacon's Historia Langobardorum, records that the Saracens invaded "all Hispania" from Septem (Ceuta).

Roderic made several expeditions against the invaders before he was deserted by his troops and killed in battle in 712. The chronicler of 754 claims that some of the nobles who had accompanied Roderic on his last expedition did so out of "ambition for the kingdom", perhaps intending to allow him to die in battle so that they could secure the throne for one of themselves. Whatever their intentions, most of them seem to have died in the battle as well. Other historians have suggested that low morale amongst the soldiery because of Roderic's disputed succession was the cause of defeat. The majority of Roderic's soldiers may have been poorly trained and unwilling slave conscripts; there were probably few freemen left fighting for the Goths.

The location of the battle is debatable. It probably occurred near the mouth of the Guadalete river, hence its name, the Battle of Guadalete. According to Paul the Deacon, the site was the otherwise unidentifiable "Transductine promontories".

According to the Chronicle of 754, the Arabs took Toledo in 711 and executed many nobles still in the city on the pretense that they had assisted in the flight of Oppa, a son of Egica. Since this took place, according to the same chronicle, after Roderic's defeat, either the defeat must be moved back to 711 or the conquest of Toledo pushed back to 712; the latter is preferred by Collins. It is possible that the Oppa who fled Toledo and was a son of a previous king was the cause of the "internal fury" which wracked Hispania at the time recorded in the Chronicle. Perhaps Oppa had been declared king at Toledo by Roderic and Achila's rivals, either before Roderic's final defeat or between his death and the Arab capture of Toledo. If so, the death of the nobles who had "ambition for the kingdom" may have been Oppa's supporters who were killed in Toledo by the Arabs shortly after the battle in the south.

According to a ninth-century chronicle, a tombstone with the inscription Hic requiescit Rodericus, rex Gothorum (here rests Roderic, king of the Goths) was found at Egitania (modern Idanha-a-Velha, Portugal). According to the legend of Nazaré the king fled the battlefield alone. Roderic left a widow, Egilo, who later married one of the Arabic governors of Hispania.