THE UMAYYAD REGIME 189Pamplona and was murdered by the citizens in 799. This did not stop
the Banu Qasi from allying later with Inigo Arista, the king of
Pam pion a, whose dynasty was created in the ensuing chaos; these
links, bonded by marriage ties, continued throughout the ninth cen-
tury. The despatch of a mawali general Amriis ibn Ytisuf by the amir
in 802 led to the suppression of Bahliil, the chastising of the Banu
Qasi and the sacking of Pamplona. Amrtis fortified Tudela prior to
his death in 812, and organised a march in the upper Ebro around
it. However, the beneficiaries of his activity were to be the Banu Qasi.
Mtisa ibn Mtisa, impossibly claimed as the grandson of that Fortun
who had gone to Damascus in 714, was governor of Tudela by 842,
in which year he was in revolt against his Umayyad master. In alliance
with the king of Pamplona, he defeated an army sent against him by
the amir, but they were routed when 'Abd al-Ral).man II led an ex-
pedition to the march in person the following year. Yet so essential
and irreplaceable did Mtisa seem to be that when he submitted in
844 he was restored to his governorship, only to revolt again with im-
punity in 847. For the next fifteen years he acted in practice as an
independent ruler, and was even talked of as 'the third king in Spain'.
He died in 862.11
Later members of his family were equally ambitious and hard to
control, although after Milia's defeat by the Asturians in 859 none
were able to exercise such extensive power as he. His three sons
made themselves masters of Tudela and Zaragoza in 871 and 872,
although one of them fell into the hands of the amir Mol).ammed I,
and was crucified at Cordoba. Zaragoza remained theirs, despite at-
tempts to retake it, until 890, when a grandson of Miisa sold it back
to the Umayyads. This Mol).ammed ibn Lope ibn Miisa (d. 898) went
on to make himself master of Toledo in 897, and Mu'tarrif, one of
his sons who succeeded him there, took the title of king, before being
murdered by the citizens in 906. His brother Lope, the last of the
line, held Lerida, and directed his ambitions against Catalonia before
being killed in battle in 907. Despite occasional destructive but incon-
clusive expeditions from Cordoba, and, more successfully, the building
up of an alternative power in the region through the Arab family
of the Tujibites, the Umayyads were unable to crush or to do without
the Banu Qasi, who made many agreements and honoured few.
Accidents of war and assassination finally eliminated them, but in
their careers and the difficulties they posed for the amirs they were
far from unique. Even Amriis ibn YllSuf, who had killed Bahliil, and