Talk:Umayyad conquest of Hispania

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1 Page move
2 Iberia?
3 WikiProject class rating
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[edit] Page move

"Islamic invasion of Iberia" gets 16 Google hits. "Islamic conquest of Iberia" gets 213. Please move the page back. Furthermore, the new title doesn't go in according to WP:NPOV, not matter how true you think it is. —Khoikhoi 04:11, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

The Google hits on this issue is a moot point. The title should be accurate and describle the actual character of the event rather than present a revisionist ill-informed spin on this period of history.--CltFn 04:13, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

You're looking at the event from the Spanish side, therefore it's not neutral. We also have to include the Muslim side. --—Khoikhoi 04:28, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Sure both sides need to be included but must be supported by facts and sources. Invasion is defined as "The act of invading, especially the entrance of an armed force into a territory " and that is precisely what happened.--CltFn 04:54, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

What you may see as a "fact" may not be seen as a fact by the other side. Please move it back. —Khoikhoi 05:03, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

This article covers the period of 711 to 718 . That was a period of invasion. Invasion describe what took place accurately . --CltFn 05:21, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm going to contact some other users and ask what they think. —Khoikhoi 05:22, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Conquest.. Invasion.. the differnce between the terms is not important,IMO. however, the invasion/Conquest was not Islamic, less you can prove to me it was requested by Muhammad. It was an invasion by the Moors, thus, it was a Moorish invasion. --Irishpunktom\^talk 10:59, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

I was thinking the exact same thing. It was not an "Islamic" invasion/conquest (whichever word you want to use), it was a Moorish conquest/invasion. I'm sure, at least at that time, that not all Moors (ie. Berbers) were Muslim, although most would have been. That they were muslim was pure chance. Other non-Mulsim Berbers also entered during the conquest, including some Berber Jews and others. In regards to the choice of invasion over conquest, I don't necessarily have a problem with either, but to avoid POV I'd go for conquest. Invasion is too emotional. I see no purpose in changing to invasion, it would be as useful as renaiming "Spanish conquest of the Americas" to "Spanish invasion of the Americas". Al-Andalus 03:47, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Well, I was just an Islamic invasion made mainly by Moors. If anyone has got any doubt about this just consult the capitulations between Abd-al-Aziz ibn Muzza ibn Nussair (the Arabian and Islamic governor of North Africa) and Tudmir (Visigothic dux of Western Spain(?)) to surrender the current Spanish region of Murcia, the capitulations began with the clasic "In the name of Allah! ... ". So where is the doubt?

Threshold 16:37, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

When Muslims eat, they begin with the "Classic" formulation "In the name of Allah...." it's traditional to invoke that formulation at the beginning of anything, a supplication to grace, from eating food to setting out an a journey, to marraige, to prayer to contracts etc. No doubt the army was predominantly berber and almost entirely muslim because of both logistics and ideology but the top brass was arab and umayyad, in fact the only place the umayyad continued on after the abbasid revolt was by escaping to Cordoba. Any rate, while Europeans may only have seen then as a monolithic entity of "muslims" or "islamics" much as they may have overlooked the difference between the franks and visigoths it helps to be specific if only to differentiate between the different periods and rulers, kingdoms and empires who all even in the crusades labelled simply as the muslims. The best analogy I can raise is calling Indians and Chinese Asians or even Vietnamese and Chinese Asians. Hope that helps.--Tigeroo 09:01, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

As per this discussion I am moving the article to read conquest vs. invasion, and moorish to umayyad as conquest also describes the political affect of the incorporation of the territory into Ummayyad fold.--Tigeroo 09:32, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

The conquest was achieved by the Umayyads - this basic knowledge is needed in order understand political and military developments in Al-Andalus and elsewhere. Good changes. --Ian Pitchford 12:44, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Iberia?

Well, now that you have achieved a consensus about some of the parts of the title of this article, let me introduce another question: There is no reason for calling Iberia the lands conquered by the Moorish in 711, for several reasons:

Iberia is an ambiguous term, than can mistake about the historical time of the conquest. It was the Greek term for the peninsula, and also refers to Iberian people, who had dissapeared as a group hundreds of years before.
The land conquered by the Moorish was called Hispania by their inhabitans under Visigothic domain, and so it was called before under the Roman Empire, that determined most of the cultural references of the Peninsula before the Umayyads, including language.
If we take the name of the conquerors we should use Al-Ándalus, but I think this would be an error, because what was conquered properly was Hispania, not Al-Andalus.
The term Iberia is scarcely used nowadays, and it is commonly used in the form "Iberian Peninsula" to limit a geographical precise entity. Iberia is known nowadays in the Spanish speaking (and I think it could happen also to English) more as an Airlines trade group than anything related to geography :-))

Therefore, I think that the title should be changed to Umayyad Conquest of Hispania, if we prefer a historical emphasis in the title, or the longer Umayyad Conquest of the Iberian Peninsula, if we prefer a geographical emphasis. I rather prefer the former, that gives more information about the historical moment. any opinion?--Garcilaso 17:25, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

I would support the former too. Regards, E Asterion ^{u talking to me?} 21:42, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

I would vote for the geographical context (Going to ignore the expansion into Septamania due to size and time period) because technically unless the Visigoths also called their land Hispania (Vandalucia theory for the Arab name Andalus) the Roman province was gone, and Byzantines (Eastern Roman Empire)who succeeded are probably the ones who preferred to use the term Iberia for region. (I am guessing here, because they are the only Greek speaking power with influence enough to introduce a new name into Europe and who countinued to claim the title and inheritance of the Romans). Personally no real preference, just unsure on what the conventions are, everywhere I've run across the reference it has always read the Iberian peninsula vs. the political regions. As an aside did not the Visigoth Kingdom extend into Aquitania as well prior to the arrival of the Umayyads.--Tigeroo 04:50, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree, of course, with Tigeroo, in saying that every title or definition has nuances, and it is very difficult to explain an exact historical concept in less than ten words. The article, not the title, would make that distinctions. It could be good to have that magic word that would be exact, but, as you say, not purely all Hispania was conquered and not all that was conquered was Hispania. It is a rough aproximation. Anyway, the same problem goes with Iberian Peninsula, that was not conquered in its integrity, and, as you say, the Moorish also reached up to Poitiers. But that incursion beyond the Pirinees can hardly be considered an conquest for its ephemeral character. (If we are precise, the conquest was not even made by the Umayyads themselves, but by their Moorish leaders Tariq and Musa ibn Nusair, and afterwards, it was used as a shelter by Abd ar-Rahman I, the Umayyad prince, only afted the conquest was complete).

Indeed, Hispania was the term used to call either political and geographically the region, and here you have some text from the Etymologiae of Saint Isidore of Seville (by the way, for his effort in compailing the knowledge of his moment and also because of his visible limitations could be considered a precursor of the Wikipedia:-))[1]

Book 14: DE TERRA ET PARTIBUS (About Earth and its divisions)

4.2 Europa autem in tertiam partem orbis divisa incipit a flumine Tanai, descendens ad occasum per septentrionalem Oceanum usque in fines Hispaniae.

4.19 Italia autem et Hispania idcirco Hesperiae dictae quod Graeci Hespero stella navigent et in Italia et in Hispania. Quae hac ratione discernuntur; aut enim Hesperiam solam dicis et significas Italiam, aut addis ultimam et significas Hispaniam, quia in occidentis est fine.

4.28 Hispania prius ab Ibero amne Iberia nuncupata, postea ab Hispalo Hispania cognominata est. Ipsa est et vera Hesperia, ab Hespero stella occidentali dicta.

It is interesting also the 9th book, in which he talks, as an historian about the Iberian people. As you can see, he the higest thinker of the Visigothic period calls Hispania the region and the political entity in is days, and also remembers that Romans also did, and talks about the origin of the Iberian population as pure history. Other less cultivated Visigoths wouldn´t even have mentioned (and ignored) that historical name. So, as you can see, Iberia is completely out of context, and I don´t Know how Bizantines(?) called it, but they weren´t in Hispania an directly influent political and cultural group. (Anyway, I suspect deeply that they also called it Hispania, dont forget that they were origined as an extension of Roman Empire culture.)

Therefore, I still plead for Hispania.--Garcilaso 11:17, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

These are some maps with some differences (I suppose whether they represent different moments or different theories, but all of them showing the Visigothic Kingdom after the absortion of the Bizantine territories and before the incorporation of the kingdom of the Suevos by Leovigildo.[2][3][4]

These are some maps of the first moments of the Moorish advance [5] and of different moments of Al-Ándalus and the Reconquista[6]. As can be seen, with the addition of the Suevii Kindgom, the firsts Umayyad Al-Ándalus corresponds quite good to the Visigothic Hispania, missing the territories beyond the Cantabre Mountains. So it is more inexact to refer to Iberian Peninsula, that was never entirely conquered, than to the Visigothic Hispania, that almost completely matches.--Garcilaso 14:43, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] WikiProject class rating

This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 04:58, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Reworking

I intend to rework this page substantially. The problem is that the detailed accounts of the invasion are essential legends written hundreds of years later. None of the the stuff about Julian is remotely contemporary, for example. I propose to start by talking about what we actually know, and then split off the later inventions and describe them as such. We also need to talk about the analysis of whether the invasion was intentional, or just an unusually large raid that got lucky. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bge20 (talk • contribs) 11:30, 3 April 2008 (UTC)