(Seville). Rome built public works that still
remain, such as the Segovia aqueduct (1st
century a.d.), and made Spain a center for
poetry and thought. Most notably, Rome
left Spain the Latin language, the ancestor
of modern Spanish and Portuguese, along
with French, Italian, and other Romance
languages.
By facilitating travel in the
Mediterranean basin, Roman rule inad-
vertently helped Christianity to reach
Spain, some time in the 1st century a.d.
Until Rome proclaimed official tolerance
for Christianity in the 4th century,
Christians in Spain were often persecuted,
with tales of glorious martyrdom becom-
ing part of the country’s lore. Fervent
Roman Catholicism, with a willingness to
blend in local pagan traditions, became an
enduring characteristic of Hispanic cul-ture. Judaism also grew in Spain under
Roman rule, as Jews who had been
expelled from their Near Eastern home-
land of Judaea added yet another element
to Spain’s ethnic and cultural mix.Visigothic Spain
After six centuries of rule, the declining
Roman Empire lost its hold on Spain. In
a.d. 409, Germanic peoples—the Alans,
Vandals, and Suevi—swept through the
Pyrenees and occupied much of the
peninsula, effectively ending Roman rule.
At Rome’s request, another Germanic
people, the Visigoths, entered Spain in
412 and soon became the dominant
power, even after the Roman empire
ceased to exist (476). With their base in4 ATLAS OF HISPANIC-AMERICAN HISTORY
According to Muslim teaching, in about the year A.D. 610, the
archangel Gabriel visited Muhammad, a Bedouin trader, and
revealed to him the word of God, whom Bedouins called Allah. In
time, Muhammad received further teachings concerning Allah’s
greatness and the need to recognize Him as the only god.
Muhammad thus became Allah’s messenger, preaching the mes-
sage he had received to the people of Mecca, the trading city
where he lived. His followers were called Muslims, which means
“those who surrender to Allah.”
Muhammad’s message that all believers—whether rich or
poor—were equal in the eyes of Allah angered the wealthy citi-
zens of Mecca, who ordered that all Muslims be restricted to a
certain section of the city. In a.d. 622, Muhammad and some of his
followers left Mecca for the village of Yathrib (later known as
Medina, “the city of the Prophet”). There, Muhammad found amore receptive audience to his message. In 628, he and his
Muslim followers captured a caravan headed for Mecca. Then, in
627, an army from Mecca was forced to make peace with
Muhammad’s forces after failing to conquer Medina. In 630,
Muhammad returned to Mecca, declared the Black Stone of
Kaaba to be an Islamic shrine, and ordered that all idols to gods
other than Allah be smashed.
Although Muhammad died two years later, his successors took
up the cause of spreading the Muslim faith. By 634, Muslims had
captured most of the Arabian peninsula, and by 652, they held
the once-powerful Persian Empire in the east and a swath of
North Africa to the west, stretching from Egypt to Tripoli. After
continuing west across North Africa, the Muslim conquerors
crossed the Strait of Gibraltar into Spain in 711. Spain remained
in Muslim hands for the next 700 years.ISLAMIC EXPANSION INTO SPAIN