The governor who sent Tariq

Musa ibn Nusayr, governor of the Maghreb, received a request in 710 from Julian of Ceuta to help take Iberia from the Visigoths. He sent his freedman Tariq ibn Ziyad with 7,000 men, followed a year later with 18,000. He was recalled to Damascus and destroyed by the caliph he had served.

Musa ibn Nusayr was born in about 640 CE to a Yemeni-Arab family that had served the early caliphate. His father had been a soldier at Yarmouk. Musa rose through Umayyad service and by 698 CE, under the caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan, was appointed governor of Ifriqiya, the great province stretching from modern Libya through Tunisia, Algeria, and eastern Morocco.

He inherited a province still contested. The Berber tribes of the interior had resisted Arab-Muslim rule for a generation. The great Berber queen al-Kahina had led a revolt as recently as 698 and had been killed only just before Musa took his post. The Byzantines still held enclaves on the coast. Umayyad control was thin.

Musa's political intelligence was that he understood the Berber tribes had to be brought into the ummah as partners, not as subjects. He recruited Berber converts into the army at every rank up to and including senior command. He appointed Berber governors over Berber districts. Tariq ibn Ziyad, the freedman who would take Iberia, was one of these Berber recruits, a former slave whom Musa had freed and promoted.

Over about ten years Musa pacified the Maghreb. By 710 CE the province was quiet from Cyrenaica to the Atlantic. His forces held Tangier at the northern tip of Africa, twelve miles across the water from Iberia.

In 710 CE, Julian, the Byzantine or Visigothic count of Ceuta, the fortress on the North African side of the strait, approached Musa. Julian's motives are disputed by the classical Muslim historians. Some say his daughter had been dishonoured at the Visigothic court of King Roderic. Some say he was a partisan of the previous Visigothic royal line that Roderic had overthrown. All agree that Julian offered Musa his ships, his intelligence, and his own contingent to support a Muslim invasion of Iberia.

Musa was cautious. He requested authorisation from Damascus. The caliph al-Walid ibn Abd al-Malik wrote back with the same caution Umar had shown Amr for Egypt: proceed carefully, do not risk the army, first send a small reconnaissance.

Musa sent a raiding party of 400 men under Tarif ibn Malik in mid-710. Tarif crossed, raided the coast, took a small quantity of plunder, and returned confirming that Iberia was militarily thin. Musa reported to Damascus. Al-Walid authorised a larger operation with the same caution.

In April 711 CE, Musa sent Tariq ibn Ziyad across the strait with about 7,000 men, mostly Berber converts. Tariq landed at the great rock at the southern tip of Iberia, Jabal Tariq, "Tariq's mountain", from which the strait and the rock are known in every European language as Gibraltar. Tariq burned his boats behind him and marched north. He met Roderic at Guadalete in July 711 and destroyed the Visigothic army in a single afternoon.

And here Musa's story turns. He had done what no Muslim general had done in a hundred years, added a whole new continent to the Dar al-Islam. He wrote to Damascus with the news. The caliph al-Walid ibn Abd al-Malik summoned him back with the treasures of Iberia.

Musa began the return journey in the autumn of 714. He crossed the peninsula slowly, then Africa slowly, gathering treasure and captives along the way. His journey took nearly a year. Al-Walid, meanwhile, was dying. His brother Sulayman ibn Abd al-Malik was next in line and was hostile to Musa's family.

Musa arrived in Damascus in mid-715 CE. Al-Walid was on his deathbed. Sulayman had already sent a message to Musa on the road ordering him to delay his arrival so that Sulayman would be caliph when Musa presented himself. Musa disobeyed. He hurried to reach al-Walid alive. He presented Iberia and its treasures to al-Walid. Al-Walid, dying, praised him.

Al-Walid died within days. Sulayman ibn Abd al-Malik became caliph. He turned on Musa immediately.

Sulayman charged Musa with corruption in the accounting of the Iberian treasure. He fined him ruinously, 100,000 dinars. He publicly humiliated him. He ordered him to stand in the sun of the courtyard until he fainted. He killed Musa's son Abd al-Aziz, whom Musa had left as governor of Iberia. Abd al-Aziz's head was brought to Damascus and shown to his father in the presence of the caliph.

Musa was destroyed. He was old, 75 by then. He was broken. He asked permission to go on Hajj. Sulayman granted it. Musa reached Mecca in the winter of 715 and died there in early 716 CE at 76.

Tariq, back in Iberia, was recalled to Damascus too, in the same purge. He was demoted, humiliated, and reduced to a modest pension. He lived out his remaining years in obscurity in Damascus and died around 720 CE.

The Muslim presence in Iberia that Musa and Tariq had established lasted seven and a half centuries. But its founders were destroyed by the caliphate they had served.

What the story teaches

Musa ibn Nusayr is remembered in the classical Muslim tradition as a warning about the politics of empire. He did everything the caliphate asked of him, pacified the Maghreb, recruited the Berbers, added a continent to the Dar al-Islam, and was destroyed for it by a caliph jealous of his success. The classical scholars take a specific lesson: the general who serves a caliphate too well can be destroyed by the caliphate for the crime of having succeeded. Ibn Khaldun would later theorise this as the natural jealousy of settled royal power toward its own frontier generals, the same tragedy that would later consume Khalid ibn al-Waleed (though more gently, at Umar's hands), Yusuf ibn Tashfin's descendants (at the hands of the Almohads), and countless other Muslim commanders whose success threatened the men who had authorised it. Musa's fate is one of the founding lessons of Islamic political history about the price of loyalty to unstable power.