182 EARLY MEDIEVAL SPAINmight have obliterated those tiny realms. This is a distortion of the
real relationship that existed between north and south during these
centuries.
The creation of the kingdom of the Asturias in the early eighth
century is enveloped by obscuring legend, but in brief, according to
the late ninth-century Asturian chronicles, for the whole episode made
no impact upon Arab historiography, the region rebelled against its
new Arab and Berber overlords in 718 under the leadership of a
Visigothic noble called Pelagius. An overwhelming victory over an
Arab army at Covadonga in the same year ended the alien rule and
ensured the future independence of the Asturias. The dating of these
events has been challenged and the year 722 proposed as a more
likely date.^2 However, more significant is the possibility that the im-
portance and scale of this episode are less great than the traditional
account allows.
The lack of concern by the Arabs as to what had taken place in the
Asturias is obvious. The reign of Pelagius coincided with a period of
intense military activity by the Arab governors, launching their almost
annual attacks on the Frankish possessions in Provence and Aqui-
taine, and yet none of them could be bothered to divert their atten-
tion to suppress him. One reason for this may be that the Arabs were
unused to severely mountainous terrain and their tactics of war were
not adapted to coping with it. It is notable that the Taurus mountains
marked the limits of their advance against the Byzantine Empire, just
as the Pyrenees were to become the effective limit of their westwards
expansion. Attempts to garrison the Asturias and Galicia proved short-
lived. The Arabs, unlike the Visigoths, did not attempt to hold even
limited lines of communications and settlement in the Cantabrian
mountains and the Pyrenees, nor did they seek to retain the line of
the former Roman limes, once the Berbers planted in Galicia were
permitted to return to Mrica. If anything, all of this suggests that they
deliberately chose to abandon these northern regions, and create a
defended frontier zone much further south.
East, central and western marches were created, with their centres
at Zaragoza, Toledo and Merida (subsequently Tudela, Medinaceli
and Badajoz), and the task of garrisoning these regions was entrusted
principally to the Berbers, established in them like the earlier Ger-
man foederati. In the Ebro valley defence was, from the late eighth
century on, made the responsibility of the local muwallad dynasty of
the Banu Qasi, while a similar function was performed in Catalonia