In A.D. 632, the death of the prophet Muhammad set off a protracted contest for control of the nascent religion of Islam, which he had founded just over 20 years before. Eventually emerging victorious from this war of succession were the Umayyads, a family of merchants from Mecca who had converted to Islam just a few years prior to the prophet’s death. In A.D. 661, the Umayyads declared themselves rulers of the Islamic Caliphate, claiming religious and political authority over the expanding realm of Muslim-controlled lands. Their empire, whose capital was Damascus, eventually stretched from the western Mediterranean to India, making it the largest empire since Rome. With the help of Berber forces from North Africa, the Umayyads moved into Iberia in A.D. 711 and conquered the fractured kingdom of the Visigoths, who had taken control there about a century earlier, after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. As a result, much of the Iberian Peninsula became the Islamic territory of al-Andalus.
After ruling for nearly a century, the Umayyad Caliphate was overthrown in A.D. 750 by the rival Abbasid family from Baghdad, who claimed descent from one of Muhammad’s uncles. Those members of the Umayyad clan who were not executed by the Abbasids fled to Córdoba, the capital city of al-Andalus.
In the decades after the Muslim conquest, al-Andalus had experienced a continuous state of conflict under its governors. By mustering support from political allies loyal to his family, the only Umayyad prince who had survived their ouster from Damascus, ‘Abd al-Rahman I (reigned A.D. 756–788), gained control of the entire territory of al-Andalus, which ranged from Barcelona to Cadiz. He proclaimed himself the emir, or political leader, of this westernmost corner of the Islamic world, a region whose population was overwhelmingly Christian. The Umayyads experienced occasional unrest
