Achila II (also spelled Agila,[lower-alpha 1]Aquila, or Akhila; died c. 714) was the Visigothic king of Hispania 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 an early Germanic people who, along with the Ostrogoths, constituted the two major political entities of the Goths within the Roman Empire in late antiquity, or what is known as the Migration Period. The Visigoths emerged from earlier Gothic groups, including a large group of 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 the Visigoths varied, with the two groups making treaties when convenient, and warring with one another when not. Under their first leader, Alaric I, the Visigoths invaded Italy and sacked Rome in August 410. Afterwards, they began settling down, first in southern Gaul and eventually in Hispania, where they founded the Visigothic Kingdom and maintained a presence from the 5th to the 8th centuries AD.
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 Umayyad conquest of Hispania, fought in 711 at an unidentified location in what is now southern Spain between the Christian Visigoths under their king, Roderic, and the invading forces of the Muslim Umayyad Caliphate, composed mainly of Berbers and some Arabs under the commander Ṭāriq ibn Ziyad. The battle was significant as the culmination of a series of Berber attacks and the beginning of the Umayyad conquest of Hispania. 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.
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Athanagild was Visigothic King of Hispania and Septimania. He had rebelled against his predecessor, Agila I, in 551. The armies of Agila and Athanagild met at Seville, where Agila met a second defeat. Following the death of Agila in 554, he was sole ruler for the rest of his reign.
Reccared I was Visigothic King of Hispania and Septimania. His reign marked a climactic shift in history, with the king's renunciation of Arianism in favour of Catholicism in 587.
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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 Umayyadconquest of Hispania, also known as the Umayyad conquest of the Visigothic Kingdom, was the initial expansion of the Umayyad Caliphate over Hispania from 711 to 718. The conquest resulted in the decline of the Visigothic Kingdom and the establishment of the Umayyad Wilayah of Al-Andalus.
This is a historical timeline of the Iberian Peninsula during the period of the post-Imperial kingdoms.
Erwig was a king of the Visigoths in Hispania (680–687).
Wittiza was the Visigothic King of Hispania from 694 until his death, co-ruling with his father, Egica, until 702 or 703.
Egica, Ergica, or Egicca, was the Visigoth King of Hispania and Septimania from 687 until his death. He was the son of Ariberga and the brother-in-law of Wamba.
Ardo is attested as the last of all Visigothic kings of Hispania, reigning from 713 or likely 714 until his death. 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.
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, officially the Kingdom of the Goths, was a 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.
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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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