against them by 'Alḳama, who lost his life in the battle. This victory, all the more remarkable after signal defeats, has been taken as the turning point from which the reconquest of Spain has been dated. National legend has told that Pelayo was chosen king not before this success but as the result of his victory, great if magnified in the telling.
In the north of Aragon and on the frontier of the Basque country (which was for the most part independent) a new centre of resistance arose in 724 under the leadership of Garcia Ximenez, who defeated the Arabs and occupied the town of Ainsa in the district called Sobrarbe. Another independent centre of resistance connected with Sobrarbe must have been formed in Navarre, and its leader according to the oldest records seems to have been Iñigo Arista. But of all this we have only confused and contradictory accounts.
For a century few victories were won over the invaders in the kingdom of Asturias. Its history may be said, according to Visigothic tradition, to have resolved itself into a struggle between king and nobles. The former aimed at an hereditary and absolute monarchy while the latter strove to keep their voice in the king's election and their long-cherished independence. Alfonso I the Catholic, Duke of Cantabria and son-in-law of Pelayo, was the only one to take advantage of the internal conflicts among the Muslims. He made raids through Galicia, Cantabria and Leon, and occupied or laid waste important territories like Lugo. At his death in 756 the Muslim frontier ran by Coimbra, Coria, Toledo, Guadalajara, Tudela and Pampeluna, and the Christian frontier included Asturias, Santander, parts of Burgos, Leon and Galicia. Between these two lines was an area continually in dispute.
Such was the state of Spain on the arrival of 'Abd-ar-Raḥmān ibn Mu'āwiya. He had escaped from the general massacre of the Umayyads, which had been ordered by the Abbasids, by swimming across the Euphrates, and had seen from the opposite bank the slaughter of his thirteen-year-old brother. His faithful freedmen Badr and Sālim, who had been in his sister's service, joined him in Palestine with money and precious stones, and thence he passed to Africa, where he might have lived in peaceful obscurity. But (according to Dozy) "ambitious dreams haunted without ceasing the mind of this youth of twenty. Tall, vigorous and brave, he had been carefully educated and possessed talents out of the common. His instinct told him of his summons to a glorious destiny," and the prophecies of his uncle Maslama confirmed his belief that he would be the saviour of the Umayyads. He believed that he was destined to sit upon a throne. But where would he find one? The East was lost; there remained Spain and Africa.
In Africa the government was in the hands of Ibn Ḥabīb, who had refused to recognise the Abbasids and aimed at an independent kingdom. Because of the prophecies favourable to 'Abd-ar-Raḥmān he persecuted him: indeed he persecuted every member of the Umayyad
