Song of Toledo-Selected Readings

Song of Toledo – I

Introduction

In 711 C.E., an army some 10,000 strong, comprised of Arabs and Berbers, crossed the Mediterranean from northern Africa and landed on the Iberian Peninsula at what later became known as Gibraltar. That invasion marked the beginning of a two-decade sweep into Europe by Muslims – later known as Moors – that ended on the north side of the Pyrenees mountains, in present-day southern France, when the Moorish army was defeated in 732 by a Frankish army under Charles Martel. All that was left to the Christian descendants of the Visigoths who had ruled the entire peninsula for 300 years was a narrow strip of territory extending along the northern Atlantic coast.