The history of al-Andalus begins in the year 711, when, commanding an armyconsisting mostly of Berbers and some Arabs, Tariq b. Ziyad crossed the Strait ofGibraltar and initiated the conquest of the Iberian Peninsula at the service of Musab. Nusayr, the Umayyad ruler of the province of Ifriqiya. Apparently, Tariq achieveda decisive victory against the Visigoth King Rodrigo next to the River Guadalete,although not all scholars agree with this location of the battle. Soon, barely offeringany resistance due to the state of decomposition of the Visigothic kingdom, importantcities fell one by one, such as Seville, Cordova and Toledo, the Visigothic capital.The success of the expedition led Musa b. Nusayr to intervene directly, and withina few years practically the entire Iberian Peninsula, and even southern France, hadbeen conquered. Al-Andalus was thus established as an additional region of theUmayyad Caliphate of Damascus, dependent on the province of Ifriqiya (Manzano2006: 29–53).