246 EARLY MEDIEVAL SPAINThe Kingdom of Pamplona and the County of Aragon
THE history of the smallest of the Christian states of the Umayyad
period, the kingdom of Pamplona, is both obscure and highly contro-
versial. It has left us no contemporary chronicles and very few char-
ters but for the tenth century at least is rich in genealogies. How
Basque the realm of Pamplona, which formed the nucleus of the
later kingdom of Navarre, a term first appearing in 1087, was is hard
to determine, because what slender evidence there is relates almost
exclusively to a limited geographical region, that of Alava and the
Rioja Alta. Virtually nothing is known of the mountainous areas to
the north of Pamplona beyond the fact that there were officials bear-
ing the title Comes Vizcayae (Count of Biscay), and an administrative
region with the archaic name of Gallia Comata in those parts subject
to the authority of the kings.35 The valley of Aragon to the east of
Pamplona, which emerges from obscurity for the first time in the
ninth century, was, like the northern regions, Basque in character as
can be shown from the evidence of place and personal names in the
charters. The racial and cultural composition of Alava in the upper
Ebro, long open to penetration from the south during the Roman
and Visigothic periods, is much harder to determine. However,
Pamplona apart, the principal towns of the whole region remained in
Arab or muwallad hands until the eleventh century.
Only three events can be chronicled with any degree of confidence
in respect of this area in the eighth century. About 740 the inhabit-
ants of Pamplona expelled their Arab governor and his garrison and
in 778 Charlemagne occupied the city during his march on Zaragoza,
whether taking it from its own citizens or from renewed Muslim rule
not being known.^36 During his subsequent retreat he had the walls,
once the subject of the praises of a sixth century treatise De Laude
Pampilone (sic), or 'In praise of Pamplona', demolished.^37 Possibly in
consequence the city had an Umayyad governor again by 799. This
was Mutarrif ibn Miisa of the Banu Qasl, and in that year it is re-
corded that he and his troops were massacred by the citizens. How-
ever, by 803 The Banu Qasi, in revolt at Tudela against their Umayyad
overlords, had allied themselves with the Pamplonans, then probably
under the authority of a certain Velasco.^38 Some of them may have
taken refuge in the city after the suppression of the rebellion. Perhaps
as a consequence of the Umayyad military activity in the upper Ebro
valley, Pam pIon a submitted to the Franks in 806, only to be in revolt