Editing Battle of Covadonga (section)

==Prelude==
According to texts written by [[Mozarabs]] in northern [[Hispania]] during the late ninth century, the [[Visigoths]] in 718 elected a nobleman named [[Pelagius of Asturias|Pelagius]] (c.685–737) as their ''princeps'', or leader. Pelagius, the first monarch of the [[Kingdom of Asturias|Asturian Kingdom]], son of Favila, who had been a dignitary at the court of the Visigoth King [[Egica]] (687–700), established his headquarters at [[Cangas de Onís]], [[Asturias]] and incited an uprising against the Umayyad [[Muslims]].

From the beginning of the Muslim invasion of Hispania, refugees and combatants from the south of the peninsula had been moving north to avoid Islamic authority. Some had taken refuge in the remote mountains of [[Asturias]] in the northwestern part of the Iberian Peninsula. There, from among the dispossessed of the south, Pelagius recruited his band of fighters.

Historian Joseph F. O'Callaghan says the remnants of the Hispano-Gothic [[aristocracy]] still played an important role in the society of Hispania. At the end of Visigothic rule, the assimilation of Hispano-Romans and Visigoths was occurring at a fast pace. Their nobility had begun to think of themselves as constituting one people, the ''gens Gothorum'' or the ''Hispani''. An unknown number of them fled and took refuge in Asturias or Septimania. In Asturias they supported Pelagius's uprising, and joining with the indigenous leaders, formed a new aristocracy. The population of the mountain region consisted of native [[Astures]], [[Galicians]], [[Cantabri]], [[Basques]] and other groups unassimilated into Hispano-Gothic society.<ref name="O'Callaghan2013">{{cite book|author=Joseph F. O'Callaghan|title=A History of Medieval Spain|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cq2dDgAAQBAJ&pg=PA176|date=15 April 2013|publisher=Cornell University Press|isbn=978-0-8014-6872-8|page=176}}</ref>

Pelagius's first acts were to refuse to pay the ''[[jizya]]'' (tax on non-Muslims) to the Muslims any longer and to assault the small Umayyad garrisons that had been stationed in the area. Eventually, he managed to expel a provincial governor named [[Munuza]] from [[Asturias]]. He held the territory against a number of attempts to re-establish Muslim control, and soon founded the Kingdom of Asturias, which became a Christian stronghold against further Muslim expansion.

For the first few years, this rebellion posed no threat to the new masters of Hispania, whose seat of power had been established at [[Córdoba, Spain|Córdoba]]. Consequently, there was only a minor perfunctory reaction. Pelagius was not always able to keep the Muslims out of Asturias but neither could they defeat him, and as soon as the [[Moors]] left, he would always re-establish control. Islamic forces were focused on raiding [[Narbonne]] and [[Gaul]], and there was a shortage of manpower for putting down an inconsequential insurrection in the mountains. Pelagius never attempted to force the issue, and it was an Umayyad defeat elsewhere that probably set the stage for the Battle of [[Covadonga]]. On July 9, 721, a Muslim force that had crossed the [[Pyrenees]] and invaded [[Francia]] was defeated by them in the [[Battle of Toulouse (721)]] (now [[France]]). This was the first serious setback in the Muslim campaign in southwestern Europe. Reluctant to return to Córdoba with such unalloyed bad news, the Umayyad [[Wali (administrative title)|wāli]], [[Anbasa ibn Suhaym al-Kalbi]], decided that putting down the rebellion in Asturias on his way home would afford his troops an easy victory and raise their flagging morale.