Achila II (also spelled Agila,[a]Aquila, or Akhila; died c. 714) was the Visigothic king of Hispania and Septimania from 710 or 711 until his death. The kingdom he ruled was restricted to the northeast of the old Hispanic kingdom on account of the Arabo-Berber invasions.
Achila's reign is known solely from coins and regnal lists and is not mentioned by reliable narrative histories. Gold coins of Achila's have been found bearing the inscriptions of the mints of Girona, Zaragoza, Tarragona, and Narbonne.[1] Because the narrative sources, the numismatics, and the regnal lists all confirm the reign of Roderic during the same years as Achila, it is almost doubtless that the two were kings in opposition to each other following Roderic's coup, which may have resulted either in or from the death of the previous king, Wittiza.[2]
There are more coins surviving from Achila's kingdom than Roderic's, but the findings do not overlap in territory and it is suspected that the kingdom had been divided between two factions, with the southwest (the provinces of Lusitania and western Carthaginiensis around the capital Toledo) following (or being subjected to) Roderic and the northeast (Tarraconensis and Narbonensis) falling under the rule of Achila.[3] It is unknown to whom the provinces of Gallaecia and Baetica fell. Roderic and Achila never appear to have come into military conflict; this is probably best explained by the preoccupation of Roderic with Arab raids and not to a formal division of the kingdom.[4]
Two continuations of the Chronicon Regum Visigothorum record Achila's reign of three years following immediately upon Wittiza's.[5] It has even been suggested by some scholars that Achila was in fact Wittiza's son and successor and that Roderic had tried to usurp the throne from him, even that he had been a co-ruler with Wittiza since 708.[6] Any son of Wittiza would have been a child in 711.[7] Achila's reign probably began shortly after Roderic's and lasted until 713 or 714.
During Achila's brief reign, Arab raids began to plague the south of Hispania, where Roderic ruled. Roderic tried to defeat them but was killed in the attempt. Some supporters of Achila may have deserted Roderic on his final campaign.[8] Because of the oppressive policy of his predecessors towards the Jews and the large Jewish population of Narbonensis and because of what he stood to gain should Roderic be removed, military historian Bernard Bachrach has written that "[t]here is a temptation to conclude that the Muslims, King Achila, and the Jews all joined together, at least temporarily, to overthrow Roderic."[9]
It is possible that an ecclesiastic named Oppa was declared king at Toledo by rivals of both Roderic and Achila, either before Roderic's defeat and death at the Battle of the Guadalete or between his death and the Arab capture of Toledo.[4] Whatever the case, almost all of Hispania save Gallaecia, the Asturias, the country of the Basques, and the valley of the Ebro had fallen to the Arabs within a couple years of Roderic's death. In 713 the Arabs and their Berber allies began the conquest of the Ebro valley, taking Zaragoza. These events coincide with the end of Achila's three-year reign and may have accounted for his death in battle with the invaders.[10] The nature of the discovery of a smattering of coins at El Bovalar near Lleida shows that El Bovalar probably fell and was razed by the invaders in 714.[11]
Achila was succeeded by Ardo, who only reigned in Narbonensis north of the Pyrenees and probably died in the Arab invasion of that region in 721.[11]
↑ Collins, Visigothic, 131. According to Thompson, The Goths, 251, two types of coin have been found from the Narbonnese mint.
↑ Collins, Visigothic, 138–39. Thompson, The Goths, 251, believed that Achila succeeded Roderic after his defeat and death, when only the northeast of the kingdom remained under Visigothic control.
The Visigoths were a Germanic people united under the rule of a king and living within the Roman Empire during late antiquity. The Visigoths first appeared in the Balkans, as a Roman-allied barbarian military group united under the command of Alaric I. Their exact origins are believed to have been diverse but they probably included many descendants of the Thervingi who had moved into the Roman Empire beginning in 376 and had played a major role in defeating the Romans at the Battle of Adrianople in 378. Relations between the Romans and Alaric's Visigoths varied, with the two groups making treaties when convenient, and warring with one another when not. Under Alaric, the Visigoths invaded Italy and sacked Rome in August 410.
Pelagius was a Hispano-Visigoth nobleman who founded the Kingdom of Asturias in 718. Pelagius is credited with initiating the Reconquista, the Christian reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula from the Moors, and establishing the Asturian monarchy, making him the forefather of all the future Iberian monarchies, including the Kings of Castile, the Kings of León, and the Kings of Portugal.
The Battle of Guadalete was the first major battle of the Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula, fought in 711 at an unidentified location in what is now southern Spain between the Visigoths under their king, Roderic, and the invading forces of the Umayyad Caliphate, composed mainly of Berbers and some Arabs under the commander Tariq ibn Ziyad. The battle was significant as the culmination of a series of Berber attacks and the beginning of al-Andalus. Roderic was killed in the battle, along with many members of the Visigothic nobility, opening the way for the capture of the Visigothic capital of Toledo.
Septimania is a historical region in modern-day southern France. It referred to the western part of the Roman province of Gallia Narbonensis that passed to the control of the Visigoths in 462, when Septimania was ceded to their king, Theodoric II. During the Early Middle Ages, the region was variously known as Gallia Narbonensis, Gallia, or Narbonensis. The territory of Septimania roughly corresponds with the modern French former administrative region of Languedoc-Roussillon that merged into the new administrative region of Occitanie. In the Visigothic Kingdom, which became centred on Toledo by the end of the reign of Leovigild, Septimania was both an administrative province of the central royal government and an ecclesiastical province whose metropolitan was the Archbishop of Narbonne. Originally, the Goths may have maintained their hold on the Albigeois, but if so it was conquered by the time of Chilperic I. There is archaeological evidence that some enclaves of Visigothic population remained in Frankish Gaul, near the Septimanian border, after 507.
Reccared I was the king of the Visigoths, ruling in Hispania, Gallaecia and Septimania. His reign marked a climactic shift in history, with the king's renunciation of Arianism in favour of Roman Christianity in 587.
Theodemir or Theudimer was a Visigothic comes (count) prominent in the southeast of Carthaginensis during the last decades of the Visigothic kingdom and for several years after the Arab conquest. He ruled seven cities in southeastern Spain, mentioned in the Treaty of Orihuela that was preserved by the Andalusian historian Ibn Adarí in the thirteenth century: Orihuela, Valentila, Alicante, Mula, Bigastro, Eyya, and Lorca.
Roderic was the Visigothic king in Hispania between 710 and 711. He is well known as "the last king of the Goths". He is actually an extremely obscure figure about whom little can be said with certainty. He was the last Goth to rule from Toledo, but not the last Gothic king, a distinction which belongs to Ardo.
The Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula, also known as the Arab conquest of Spain, was the Umayyad conquest of the Visigothic Kingdom of Hispania in the early 8th century. The conquest resulted in the end of Christian rule in most of Iberia and the establishment of Muslim Arab-Moorish rule in that territory, which came to be known as al-Andalus, under the Umayyad dynasty.
Erwig was a king of the Visigoths in Hispania (680–687).
Liuvigild, Leuvigild, Leovigild, or Leovigildo, was a Visigothic king of Hispania and Septimania from 567 to 586. Known for his Codex Revisus or Code of Leovigild, a law allowing equal rights between the Visigothic and Hispano-Roman population, his kingdom covered modern Portugal and most of modern Spain down to Toledo. Liuvigild ranks among the greatest Visigothic kings of the Arian period.
Wittiza was the king of the Visigoths from 694 until his death, co-ruling with his father, Egica, until 702 or 703.
Egica, Ergica, or Egicca (c. 640 – 701/703), was the Visigoth King of Hispania and Septimania from 687 until his death. He was the son of Ariberga and the nephew of Wamba.
Ardo is the last attested king of the Visigoths, reigning from 713 or 714 until his death in 720 or 721. The Visigothic Kingdom was already severely reduced in power and area at the time he succeeded Achila II, and his dominions probably did not extend beyond Septimania and present-day Catalonia, due to the Arab conquests of the previous three years.
Oppas, also spelled Oppa, was a member of the Visigothic elite in the city of Toledo on the eve of the Muslim conquest of Hispania. He was a son of Egica and therefore a brother or half-brother of Wittiza.
Rechiar or Flavius Rechiarius was the third Suevic king of Gallaecia, from 448 until his death, and also the first one to be born in Gallaecia. He was one of the most innovative and belligerent of the Suevi monarchs. Hydatius, the contemporary bishop and chronicler from Galicia who is the sole contemporary source for biographical details of Rechiar, established his reputation as that of a barbarian with little sense of Roman law, culture, or custom; accusations already discredited, but very common at that time.
The Eighteenth Council of Toledo was the last of the councils of Toledo held in Visigothic Spain before the Moorish conquest of 711. It was held after the Seventeenth Council in 694, probably in 703 during the reign of King Wittiza (701–710) or his co-reign with his father, Ergica, from 693. It was presided over by Gunderic, Archbishop of Toledo.
Spania was a province of the Eastern Roman Empire from 552 until 624 in the south of the Iberian Peninsula and the Balearic Islands. It was established by the Emperor Justinian I in an effort to restore the western provinces of the Empire.
The Visigothic Kingdom, Visigothic Spain or Kingdom of the Goths was a barbarian kingdom that occupied what is now southwestern France and the Iberian Peninsula from the 5th to the 8th centuries. One of the Germanic successor states to the Western Roman Empire, it was originally created by the settlement of the Visigoths under King Wallia in the province of Gallia Aquitania in southwest Gaul by the Roman government and then extended by conquest over all of Hispania. The Kingdom maintained independence from the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire, whose attempts to re-establish Roman authority in Hispania were only partially successful and short-lived.
Sindered became Archbishop of Toledo in Visigothic Hispania around the year 710 or 711, succeeding Gunderic. But at least one later chronicler makes him archbishop during the reign of Wittiza (694–710), during which he supposedly took part in Wittiza's challenge to church authority during the last nine years of his reign. Sindered is said to have obeyed the king's orders "by continually harassing and persecuting men of high standing amongst the clergy" in the kingdom, though reliably recorded is only that, according to the Chronicle of 754, either he or Gunderic instituted some sort of pressure.
Julian, Count of Ceuta (Spanish: Don Julián, Conde de Ceuta,, Arabic: يليان, was, according to some sources, a renegade governor, possibly a former comes in Byzantine service in Ceuta and Tangiers who subsequently submitted to the king of Visigothic Spain before secretly allying with the Muslims. According to Arab chroniclers, Julian had an important role in the Umayyad conquest of Hispania, a key event in the history of Islam, and in the subsequent history of what were to become Spain and Portugal.
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