THE V\'ESTERN MEDITERRANEAN Kl:\GOOMS 1200-1500southern flank, such as Lleida (Lerida), though it possessed
a significant Jewish community with close cultural links to
Muslim Spain. Still, it is noticeable how much lighter is the
imprint of Arabic speech on the Catalan language than it is
on Spanish or Portuguese, reflecting the less intimate links
between Christian and Muslim in medieval Catalonia.
In both areas early advances were made against Islam,
which had dominated most of the Iberian peninsula since
the Muslim invasion of 711. Barcelona shrugged off a Muslim
governor at the very start of the ninth century, Girona even
earlier, in 785. In this period, aid was extended to both the
Catalans and the Aragonese by the Frankish ruler Charle-
magne, who visited Spain on an expedition that brought
few firm political results, but which was commemorated ever
after in the legend of his faithful follower Roland, supposedly
cut down at Roncesvalles in the Pyrenees by Muslim foes; in
fact, the battle of Roncesvalles was an attack on his baggage
train by Basque brigands. However, one political advantage
that was gained from Charlemagne's intervention was the
extension of Frankish overlordship over Catalonia, but not
in any significant sense over Aragon; throughout the years
up to 1258 the counts of Barcelona were technically depend-
ent on the crown of France for their Catalan territories.^1 Yet
it was more the absence of France than its presence that
stimulated the counts into solving the region's problems
on their own; Count Wilfred or Guifre the Hairy (879-97)
acquired a large bloc of lands including Barcelona and
Girona, and won repute as the patron of the restored see of
Vic and of the great abbey of Ripoll. His reign was not all
a success story; he died fighting the Muslims in Catalonia,
and he did little to integrate his lands, which lay on both
sides of the Pyrenees, into a coherent whole. This is hardly
to be expected: notions of 'state-building' are not some-
thing for which one should bother to look in this period,
even though later generations looked back to him as the
founding father of the Catalan realm.
The early kingdom of Aragon achieved expansion more by
settlement than by conquest; what began as a small Pyrenean
- For the early history of the Spanish March, see R. Collins, 'Charles the
Bald and Wifred the Hairy', in M. Gibson, J Nelson, eds, Charles the
Bald. Court and Kingdom, 2nd ed. (Aldershot, 1990), pp. 169-RR.