THE ARAB CONQUEST 155Mrican sources, and coinciding with the beginning of the reign of
the caliph Walid I (705-715), is almost certainly to be preferred.
M-usa had close ties of clientage to the Umayyad house, especially to
'Abd al-Aziz ibn Marwan, the governor of Egypt, who at this time was
still the immediate superior to the governor of Ifriqiya. The area
around Tangiers was conquered by the year 71 0 by a force com-
manded by Tariq, a freedman and client of Musa. According to some
of the sources a series of naval raids were then carried out across the
straits against settlements on the Spanish coast. One of these, com-
manded by a Berber called Tarif ibn Malluq was apparently a fairly
substantial operation.
At this time Ceuta was said to form part of the Visigothic kingdom,
and its governor, a count Julian, is reported to have been seeking an
opportunity for revenge against his royal master. He therefore was
willing to co-operate with Tariq in ferrying the Berber army across
the straits into Spain. There the recently enthroned Visigothic king
Roderic (710-11) was in the north of the peninsula, campaigning
against the Basques. Hearing of this unexpected threat in the south,
he hastened to meet it, only to be defeated and killed in a battle said
to be on the river Guadalete (Wadi-laqqa). In the immediate after-
math of his victory Tariq went on to capture Toledo, while according
to some of the texts a detachment under MUgl\ al-Rumi took Cordoba.
From Kairouan Musa, hearing what was happening in the Iberian
peninsula, hastened to cross to Spain to take personal command of
this unpremeditated conquest. He is reported as having conducted a
four or thirteen month long siege of Merida. A number of stories
report M-usa's deliberate humiliation of Tariq, as a demonstration of
his authority over his freedman deputy, and also the subsequentjeal-
ousy and rivalry between the two. This theme was also extended
upwards to include the caliph Walid I (705-15), who is described as
being persuaded into recalling the too successful Musa and also pre-
venting him from carrying out his plan of murdering Tariq. By the
time these two had returned to Syria Walid was on the point of death,
and his successor and brother Sulayman (715-17) relegated Miisa to
impoverished obscurity, while nothing more is heard of Tariq. This
would have been followed by the recall of Miisil 's son. Abd al-Aziz,
who had been left as governor of Al-Andalus and had been continu-
ing the conquest of the peninsula, but was suspected of harbouring
plans of restoring a Spanish monarchy in his own interest. He is said
to have married the widow or a daughter of Roderic, and to have