The lack of any expansionary interests on the part of the Visigothic
monarchs and the apparent difficulties of raising large-scale armies
meant that there was not the organisation available for the new con-
querors to draw on to create forces of their own use from the indig-
enous population. Moreover, such forces, to be acceptable to the
Arabs, would have to accept Islam. Qu'ranic injunction prevented
forcible conversion, and the more complex social structures of
Romano-Gothic society meant that large-scale acceptance of Islam
would not result from that of key individuals. Although the kind of
treaties represented by that with the region of 'Tudmir' kept local
order in a period of rapid conquest, the Arabs could not just leave
the Iberian peninsula to fend for itself while they just pressed on
across the Pyrenees. Military, financial and administrative necessities
meant that they had to pay increasing attention to the establish-
ment of a new governance of the territories of the former Visigothic
kingdom.
Some clues as to how this was done can be culled from the Chronicle
of 754. The governor Al-l;Iurr (715-718) is said to have established
'judges' throughout Spain, and to have instituted the collection of
taxes in 'Hispania Ulterior', here meaning the whole of the peninsula
south and west of the Ebro valley. By judges the chronicler is prob-
ably referring to qiiltis. Although normally thought of as religious
judges, meeting out justice according to the rules of the Qu'ran and
the Shari 'a, the qiitJis seem in the early periods of Islamic conquest to
have been responsible for a wider range of administrative as well as
judicial functions. In this sense they filled the roles of the Late Ro-
man and Visigothic comites: the 'counts' who served as fiscal and military
administrators and the principal secular magistrate in each major
town. It is not unreasonable to suspect that the chronicler's 'judges'
controlled the Arab and Berber garrisons of those settlements that
were ruled directly by the conquerors, and were responsible for the
collection of taxes from the conquered population.
While they lasted the towns and regions that had submitted under
the terms of a treaty were responsible for their own self-government
and for providing the Arab rulers with the tribute stipulated in the
agreement. In those places where the conquerors had encountered
resistance or which, such perhaps as Cordoba and Toledo, they were
determined to rule directly, they had to set up their own administra-
tion. While some of the population might be enslaved, there was only
limited need for such manpower, particularly as the number of the
