THE ARAB CONQUEST 159aristocracy, whose members were central to the process of selecting
a new king or endorsing the heir of the previous one. Since the time
of Wamba and bishop Julian, if not earlier, Toledo had become the
unique ritual focus for the processes of making a Visigothic king, but
as the sources unanimously testify the city fell to the conquerors
either before or immediately after Roderic's defeat. Therefore, these
events, occurring in quick succession, meant that the possibility of
centrally organised resistance to the conquerors was effectively elim-
inated. In the east the far more substantial and powerful Sassanian
empire had managed to maintain increasingly ineffectual opposition
to the Arabs for nearly nine years after the fall of the capital of
Ctesiphon and despite a succession of defeats, while its ruler the shah
Yazdgard III (632-51) continued to live. In the case of Spain the
death of the king, shattering of his comitatus and fall of the capital
paralysed the operation of the political and military functions of the
kingdom, and led to its more rapid conquest. An almost identical set
of circumstances ensured the speedy and effective Norman seizure of
the Anglo-Saxon kingdom in 1066.
As in their conquests elsewhere in the Mediterranean, the Arabs
had benefited both from taking advantage of divisions amongst the
ranks of their victims and from the procedures they followed in secur-
ing their conquests. In Mrica in 646 they had invaded the Byzantine
province in the aftermath of a revolt in which the provincial governor
had proclaimed his independence from Constantinople. In Spain the
invasion of 711 coincided with the civil war that resulted from the
election of Roderic, and in southern France in the 720/1 the first
Arab penetration across the Pyrenees occurred in the later stages of
a major civil war in the north, in which the first intended victim, the
duke of Aquitaine, was deeply embroiled. As in the eastern Mediter-
ranean, Arab armies offered simple terms to the towns they menaced.
Immediate surrender would be rewarded by the guarantee of con-
tinuing local self-government and religious freedom, in return for
stipulated amounts of tax. Resistance, on the other hand, would be
punished, should the town fall, by the enslavement of the population.
The text of one of the treaties made between an Arab commander
and a region, in this case a group of seven small town under the
direction of a Visigothic dux called Theodemir, has been preserved in
various later works. By this treaty the seven towns in the south-east of
the peninsula, in the area that later from the name of their lord came
to be called 'Tudmir', agreed to pay a capitation tax in precious