[3] The names of Tarif ibn Malik abu Zarah and Tarik ibn Zeyad
have been confused by all the careless writers on Spanish
history--_e.g._ Conde, Dunham, Yonge, Southey, etc.; but Gibbon,
Freeman, etc., of course do not fall into this error. For
Tarif's names see De Gayangos, Al Makk., i. pp. 517, 519; and
for Tarik's see "Ibn Abd el Hakem," Jones' translation, note
10.

[4] Al Makk., i. 268; Isidore: Conde, i. 55.

[5] Cardonne, i. 75.

[6] Dr Dunham.

It will not be necessary to pursue the history of the conquest in
detail. It is enough to say that in three years almost all Spain and
part of Southern Gaul were added to the Saracen empire. But the Arabs
made the fatal mistake[1] of leaving a remnant of their enemies
unconquered in the mountains of Asturia, and hardly had the wave of
conquest swept over the country, than it began slowly but surely to
recede. The year 733 witnessed the high-water mark of Arab extension in
the West, and Christian Gaul was never afterwards seriously threatened
with the calamity of a Mohammedan domination.

The period of forty-five years which elapsed between the conquest and
the establishment of the Khalifate of Cordova was a period of disorder,
almost amounting to anarchy, throughout Spain. This state of things was
one eminently favourable to the growth and consolidation of the infant
state which was arising among the mountains of the Northwest. In that