168 EARLY MEDIEVAL SPAINand south of the Sierra Guadarama. While these lines of communi-
cation were not in Umayyad hands, there was little hope of extending
the newly established authority of the dynasty in the south up into the
north-east. 'Abd ar-Ral)man's predecessor Yiisuf had been faced with
an 'Abbasid inspired revolt in Zaragoza in 756, which seems to have
had the backing of 'Yemeni' units. His killing of the rebel leader
had only succeeded in alienating support in that the man was a
member of the Prophet's own tribe of Quraysh and a descendant of
MUQammad's own standard bearer. After the Umayyad seizure of
Cordoba the Ebro valley and the coastal towns seem to have gone
their own way under local Arab leaders. The threat of the imposition
of Umayyad authority following the elimination of Shaqya in 777 led
to these men turning to the Franks as possible allies: the first case of
Muslims looking for help from non-Muslims against their own fellow
believers.
Envoys were sent from the Arab leaders in Zaragoza to the Frankish
king Charles the Great's court at Paderborn in Saxony in the winter
of 777/8. They included the son of Sulayman ibn YaqJ;an aI-Arabi,
the ruler of Barcelona, and the son and son-in-law of Joseph', prob-
ably to be identified with Yiisuf al-Fihri.4s With the promise of local
support, Charles (768-814) was induced to intervene in the Ebro,
control of which had been sought by a number of his Frankish pred-
ecessors. In 778 he launched an expedition in two columns: one
came around the eastern edge of the Pyrenees towards Barcelona,
while the other under his own leadership crossed to the west and
descended the Ebro valley via Pamplona, heading for Zaragoza.
However, there had clearly been a change of heart amongst the local
Muslims, possibly when faced with the prospect of collaborating with
a Christian ruler. Sulayman ibn Yaq~an was murdered by one of his
colleagues and both Barcelona and Zaragoza were held against the
Frankish armies. Faced with resistance instead of co-operation and
with a large-scale revolt having broken out in Saxony, the two Frank-
ish forces united outside Zaragoza and retreated back into Francia via
the pass of Roncesvalles. Here the rearguard was memorably am-
bushed by the Basques, and some notable members of Charles's court
were killed. It was a humiliating end to a disastrous and unprofitable
campaign; though perversely it became the much transformed sub-
ject of the great of French medieval epic poems, the Chanson de
Roland.^44 As for the fickle Arab rulers of the Ebro valley, by the end
of 779 they had been forced to submit to the rule of the Umayyads,