The Islamic armies burned entire villages to the ground, and sold captured Spanish children into slavery. Spanish women were raped and enslaved, and Spanish men were executed or enslaved.
Who were the Spaniards in 711 A.D.? Until that year, a colorful diversity of people lived in peaceful coexistence on the Iberian Peninsula: Native Spaniards, who were mainly Celts; a few descendants of the Roman settlers who’d moved into the area centuries earlier; Jews of mideastern descent; and Visigoths, Germanic administrators who’d helped create a more complex urban society there.
All of these various groups would suffer under the military occupation which would control most of Spain for the next few centuries.
As historian Dario Fernandez-Morera explains, “Spain was conquered and colonized by the forces of the Islamic Caliphate” in 711 A.D., starting from the southernmost point of Spain, advancing northward, and spreading east and west. “The conquest was carried out by force.”
How did most of Spain fall so quickly and so easily? “The Muslim conquerors used force to defeat the resistance of the Christian Visigoth kingdom, a nascent civilization.” Spain’s government was too new to offer strong resistance; it was still in the process of formation.
The Spaniards who were not executed or enslaved had the option of “living in subaltern status in Islamic lands.” Such humiliation was more tolerable than facing “the consequences of resisting.” But even for those who chose to submit to the occupying Muslim armies, there “was always the threat of brutal force.”
After 711 A.D., Spain endured several centuries of “religious and therefore cultural repression in all areas of life and the marginalization of certain groups - all this in the service of social control by autocratic rulers and a class of religious authorities.” Islam oppressed and nearly extinguished Judaism, Christianity, and anything else in Spain that might not fit into the narrow confines of Sharia law.
It seemed as if Spain might be gone forever: as if its people and culture would be ground into the dirt under the marching boots of Muslim soldiers. But in northwestern Spain, a few brave resisters held out, and fought back over the next few centuries. They salvaged Spain. It is their magnificent achievement that today there is a Spain at all.
