THE CHRISTIAN REALMS 223importance of the Asturian kingdom and other Christian states in the
north of the peninsula in the subsequent centuries, might have been
expected to display some interest in their origins. In fact they have
very little to say on the history and society of these realms, or on the
Visigothic past. It is noticeable that more interest is displayed in these
subjects by Arab authors writing in the East than by those of Al-
Andalus. Thus for example Ibn al-Athlr, working in Mesopotamia,
seems to have been better informed on the chronology of the
Visigothic kings than were the Christians in Spain, who claimed to be
their heirs. On the other hand the caliph and historian Al-I;Iakam II
is reported to have commissioned the writing of a History of the Franks
by a Bishop of Gerona and an Arabic translation of Orosius, but
seems to have displayed no such interest in the past of the Christians
of northern Spain.^2 The attitude of the Andalusis may seem strange,
but then Isidore would never have considered writing a history of the
Basques or of the Cantabrians, and no one in Visigothic Spain would
have wished for one.
For the history of the formative period of the Christian states of
northern Spain, we have to turn to their own sparse records in the
form of some short chronicles, some genealogies and regnal lists, and
various collections of charters. In the case of the Asturias, the earliest
of these realms to come into being, the first charter is a deed issued
by King Silo (774-783) granting some lands for the foundation and
support of a monastery and is dated 23 August 775.^3 There is a
handful of other genuine eighth-century charters, some interpolated,
and a larger number of later forgeries. However, for the ninth, and
particularly the tenth, centuries, this source of evidence becomes
more plentiful and informative, although the problems of ascertain-
ing authenticity remain formidable. Such documents are invaluable
for the history of settlement and landholding in the kingdom, but it
is the chronicles, supplemented by the regnal lists that provide the
outline of events.
These chronicles of the Asturian realm are all products of its final
stage in the late ninth and early tenth centuries, and present many
problems of transmission and interpretation. In their present form
the earliest of them is probably the so-called Prophetic Chronicle written
in April 883, which, on the basis of a spurious and pseudo-Biblical
prophecy that the author attributes to Ezechiel, predicts the immi-
nent expulsion of the Arabs from Spain, an event due to occur one
year and seven months from this time of writing. That the Arabs did