The Visigothic Collapse and the Muslim Conquest of Iberia (711-756)

The Visigothic kingdom of Toledo rested on shaky foundations: its monarchy was elective rather than hereditary, guaranteeing succession struggles at every royal death, and a degree of religious unity forged when King Reccared converted from Arianism to Catholicism in 589 left residual tensions even after legal unification followed in 654 under the Liber Iudiciorum. The kingdom's fragility became acute under King Wittiza, and the succession crisis that followed his death in 710, disputed between Don Rodrigo and Wittiza's sons, coincided with a fragmented, poorly organized nobility that had no centralized standing army, smoothing the way for the invasion that followed.