Tariq ibn Ziyad

Who is Tariq ibn Ziyad?

Tariq ibn Ziyad was a Berber (Amazigh) commander who, in 711 CE, led the Umayyad Muslim expedition that crossed from North Africa into the Iberian Peninsula, initiating the Islamic conquest of Visigothic Hispania. He served under Musa ibn Nusayr, the Umayyad governor of Ifriqiya and the Maghreb. Landing near the great rock at the southern tip of Iberia, the promontory took his name: Jabal Tariq ('Mountain of Tariq'), from which the modern name Gibraltar derives. At the Battle of Guadalete, his forces decisively defeated the Visigothic king Roderic, opening the way to the rapid Muslim expansion across most of the peninsula, which became known as al-Andalus. Medieval Arabic chronicles attribute to him a famous rallying speech to his troops. Precise details of his birth and death are uncertain, and much of his biography is reconstructed from later sources, but his campaign is one of the most consequential events in Mediterranean and European history.

Sources: Roger Collins, 'The Arab Conquest of Spain, 710–797' (Blackwell, 1989) · Ibn Abd al-Hakam, 'Futuh Misr wa'l-Maghrib' (9th-century Arabic chronicle)