Musa received orders from Sulayman, brother and heir of the sick caliph, to delay his arrival at the capital so that it might synchronize with his accession to the caliphal throne. Evidently Musa ignored the orders. In February 715 he made his impressive entry into Damascus and was received by the caliph with great dignity and pomp in the courtyard of the newly and magnificently built Umayyad Mosque, adjoining the caliphal palace. If any single episode can exemplify the zenith of Umayyad glory, it is this memorable day on which such booty was displayed and such numbers of Western princes and fair-haired European captives were seen offering homage to the commander of the believers. Nevertheless Sulayman disciplined Musa and humiliated him. After making him stand until exhausted in the sun, he dismissed him from office and confiscated his property. Musa met the same fate that many a successful general and administrator in Islam met. The conqueror of Africa and Spain was last heard of begging for sustenance in a remote village of Hejaz.
Spain was now incorporated in the Syrian empire. Musa's successors carried on the work of rounding out the conquered territory in the east and north. Half a dozen years after the landing of the first Arab troops on Spanish soil, their successors stood facing the towering and mighty Pyrenees. Such seemingly unprecedented conquest would not have been possible but for internal weakness and dis- sension. The population of the country was Spanish- Roman ; the rulers were Teutonic Visigoths (West Goths) who had occupied the land in the early fifth century. They ruled as absolute, often despotic, monarchs. For years they professed Arian Christianity and did not adopt Catholicism, the denomination of their subjects, until the latter part of the following century. The lowest stratum of the society was held in serfdom and slavery and, with the persecuted Jews, contributed to the facility with which the conquest was achieved.
