.
The exact history of the conquest of al-Andalus is somewhat limited. No Arabic accounts of the invasion have survived, and the only information that exists has been passed down in the form of anecdotes and oral histories. These stories come from the Arab side of the takeover, and since only this history has survived, one must assume there was great controversy of how the invasion actually occurred. Kennedy's reasoning behind this unbalanced truth may have been for economic reasons. "The nature of the conquest affected the status of the lands they conquered: if they were conquered by force, they became property of the conquerors and the proceeds from these properties were to be used for Muslims as their rulers saw fit. If the lands were taken peacefully, the continued to be the absolute property of the inhabitants and would only pass into Muslim hands by inheritance, purchase, or conversion of the owner, in which case they would be the absolute property of the Muslim owners (8)." Therefore, while Muslims may say there was great battle, the land inhabitants may claim they surrendered peacefully to hold claim to their land. .
Either way, the history other beginning of the conquest is well documented in Arabic. It tells the story of Count Julian of Ceuta. He sent his daughter to the royal Visigoth court to complete her education, as was tradition for nobility at the time. At the court, she was raped by the king of the Visigoth Empire, King Roderick. She told her father, who, in turn, called upon his local Muslim ally to aide in his revenge. Majority opinion at this time holds that Tariq b. Ziyad, the governor of Muslim Tangier, moved across the Straits of Gibraltar with 7,000-12,000 mostly Berber soldiers. When Tariq got to the Iberian Peninsula, he met with Roderick's army and a battle ensued. The Visigoth army suffered a tremendous defeat, Roderick was presumed dead after the fighting, and members of his army scattered through the country expressing their defeat to the Muslims (11).
