248 EARLY MEDIEVAL SPAINassociation of the county with the kingdom of Pamplona. Thence-
forth Arag6n, under the descendants of Galindo, remained, if in
practice largely independent, a division of that realm, until elevated
into a kingdom in its own right for Ramiro I (1035-1063), the youngest
son of Sancho 'the Great' of Navarre.
As for the kingdom of Pamplona, after this reasonably we 11-
documented period of the first quarter of the ninth century, an almost
impenetrable darkness descends upon its history until the appear-
ance of a new dynasty on its throne in 905. Little is known of the
doings of Inigo Arista and his descendants beyond their almost con-
sistent alliance with the Banu Qasl, of which family the leading figure,
Musa ibn Musa, married another granddaughter of the Pamplonan
ruler, called Assona.^42 These ties were not always beneficial for the
small kingdom. In 843 King Inigo was defeated together with his
Banu Qasi allies, by the Amir 'Abd al-Ral).man II: his brother Fortun
was killed and Pamplona sacked.^43 Later his grandson, also called
Fortun, was captured by the Umayyads and spent some two decades
as a hostage in C6rdoba.^44 Fortun's daughter Iniga subsequently
married the Amir 'Abd-Allah. It is likely that the unusual closeness of
the links between the Arista dynasty in Pamplona with the Muslim
powers in the Ebro valley and C6rdoba was prompted by fear firstly
of the Franks, and then of the Asturians who were seeking throughout
the century to extend their control eastwards into Alava.
It may have been the lengthy captivity of Fortun that opened the
way for a new dynasty, that of the Jimeno family, to challenge the
rights of the heirs of Inigo to the throne. The origins of this line are
much disputed and the view that the original Jimeno was a count in
Frankish Vasconia, forced to take refuge in Pamplona after unsuccess-
ful rebellion in 815, is now strongly challenged.^45 At any rate a King
GarciaJimenez is recorded as having ruled at some point in the later
ninth century by the genealogies, but as the use of patronymics was
only introduced in the tenth century, the ninth-century charters
cannot reveal whether their references to a King Garcia are to this
man or to the son of Inigo Arista. If Garcia Jimenez did rule during
the captivity of Fortun, the latter does seem to have eventually gained
his throne, possibly around 882, but in 905 the Jimenos obtained
power definitively in the person of King Sancho Garces I (905-925).
Later medieval chronicles, admittedly of uncertain worth, refer to the
voluntary abdication of Fortun to the monastery of Leyre after the
premature deaths of all of his heirs.