Editing History of Portugal (section)

== Al-Andalus (711–868) ==
{{Main|Al-Andalus}}
[[File:Map Iberian Peninsula 750-en.svg|thumb|[[Al-Andalus|Al-Andalus Province]] of [[Ummayad caliphate]] in 750.]]

During the caliphate of the Umayyad Caliph [[Al-Walid I]], commander [[Tariq ibn-Ziyad]] led a small force that landed at [[Gibraltar]] on 30 April 711, ostensibly to intervene in a [[Visigoths|Visigothic]] civil war. After a decisive victory over King [[Roderic]] at the [[Battle of Guadalete]] on 19 July 711, Tariq ibn-Ziyad, joined by the Arab governor [[Musa ibn Nusayr]] of [[Ifriqiya]], brought most of the Visigothic kingdom under Muslim occupation in a seven-year campaign. The Visigothic resistance to this invasion was ineffective, though sieges were required to sack a couple of cities. This is in part because the ruling Visigoth population is estimated at a mere 1 to 2% of the total population.<ref>{{cite web |title=Características generales del poblamiento y la arqueología funeraria visigoda de Hispania |work=Espacio, Tiempo y Forma, S. I, Prehist. y Arqueol., t. 2 |year=1989 |first=Gisela |last=Ripoll López |pages=389–418 |quote=En resumen se puede considerar que el pueblo visigodo{{snd}}sin diferenciar la población civil de la militar{{snd}} representó de un uno a un dos por ciento sobre la totalidad de la población de Hispania. |url=http://e-spacio.uned.es/fez/eserv.php?pid=bibliuned:ETFSerie1-71E2565C-354B-7D1E-4C3F-27B8664C1938&dsID=PDF |format=PDF |access-date=2017-11-27 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100812072505/http://e-spacio.uned.es/fez/eserv.php?pid=bibliuned:ETFSerie1-71E2565C-354B-7D1E-4C3F-27B8664C1938&dsID=PDF |archive-date=2010-08-12 |url-status=dead }}</ref> On one hand this isolation is said to have been 'a reasonably strong and effective instrument of government'; on the other, it was highly 'centralised to the extent that the defeat of the royal army left the entire land open to the invaders.<ref>{{cite book|last=Kennedy|first=Hugh|title=Muslim Spain and Portugal: A political history of al-Andalus|year=1996|publisher=Longman|pages=1–14}}</ref> The resulting [[power vacuum]], which may have indeed caught Tariq completely by surprise, would have aided the Muslim conquest immensely. Indeed, it may have been equally welcome to the Hispano-Roman peasants who{{snd}}as D.W. Lomax claims{{snd}}were disillusioned by the prominent legal, linguistic and social divide between them and the 'barbaric' and 'decadent' Visigoth royalty.<ref>{{cite book|last=Lomax|first=D.W.|title=The Reconquest of Spain|year=1978|publisher=Longman|pages=15–16}}</ref>

The Visigothic territories included what is today Spain, Portugal, Andorra, Gibraltar, and the southwestern part of France known in ancient times as [[Septimania]]. The invading Moors wanted to conquer and convert all of Europe to Islam, so they crossed the [[Pyrenees]] to use Visigothic [[Septimania]] as a base of operations. Muslims called their conquests in Iberia '[[al-Andalus]]' and in what was to become Portugal, they mainly consisted of the old Roman province of [[Lusitania]] (the central and southern regions of the country), while [[Gallaecia]] (the northern regions) remained unsubdued. Until the Berber revolt in the 730s, al-Andalus was treated as a dependency of Umayyad North Africa. Subsequently, links were strained until the caliphate was overthrown in the late 740s.<ref>{{harvp|Disney|2009|pp=53–54}}</ref> The [[Medieval]] [[Muslim]] [[Moors]], who conquered and destroyed the Christian Visigothic kingdom in the [[Iberian Peninsula]], were a mix of [[Berber people|Berbers]] from [[North Africa]] and [[Arab]]s from the [[Middle East]].

[[File:Califato de Córdoba - 1000-en.svg|thumb|Most of Portugal and Spain as [[Caliphate of Córdoba]] circa 929 to 1031.]]
By 714 [[Évora]], [[Santarém, Portugal|Santarém]] and [[Coimbra]] had been conquered, and two years later [[Lisbon]] was in Muslim control. By 718 most of today's Portuguese territory was under Umayyad rule. The Umayyads [[Battle of Tours|eventually stopped in Poitiers]] but [[Timeline of Muslim presence in Iberia|Muslim rule in Iberia]] would last until 1492 with the fall of the [[Granada|Kingdom of Granada]]. For the next several centuries, much of the Iberian Peninsula remained under Umayyad rule. Much of the populace was allowed to remain Christian, and many of the lesser feudal rulers worked out deals where they would submit to Umayyad rule in order to remain in power. They would pay a [[jizya]] tax, kill or turn over rebels, and in return receive support from the central government. But some regions, including Lisbon, [[Gharb Al-Andalus]], and the rest of what would become Portugal, rebelled, succeeded in freeing themselves by the early 10th century
[[File:Taifas2.gif|thumb|Caliphate disintegrated into small [[Taifas]] kingdoms in 1031.]]
[[File:Igreja Matriz de Mértola.jpg|thumb|[[Mértola]]'s [[List of former mosques in Portugal|former mosque]] was transformed into a church in 1238.]]