[410 - 868] Germanic Kingdoms and Moorish Rule

The year is 410. The once-unshakeable foundations of the Western Roman Empire are crumbling to dust. Across the lands that will one day be called Portugal, the imperial order has evaporated. Roads fall into disrepair, aqueducts run dry, and the grand villas of the Roman elite are abandoned or fortified against a new and uncertain world. Into this power vacuum surge waves of newcomers from across the Pyrenees. They are the Germanic tribes—the Vandals, the Alans, and the Suebi—driven west by the relentless pressure of the Huns. While the Vandals and Alans swept through the peninsula towards North Africa, the Suebi saw something they liked in the green, rolling hills and misty mountains of the northwest. In the old Roman province of Gallaecia, which encompassed modern northern Portugal and Galicia in Spain, they established one of the very first independent Germanic kingdoms on former Roman soil. Their capital was the ancient city of Bracara Augusta, today known as Braga.

Life under the Suebi was a stark departure from the ordered world of Rome. Cities shrank as the population became more rural, seeking protection under local warlords in fortified hilltop settlements known as 'castros', many of which were simply reoccupied iron-age forts. The Suebi were a warrior aristocracy, numbering perhaps only 30,000, ruling over a vastly larger Hispano-Roman population of nearly a million in the region. Initially, a religious chasm divided them. The Suebi practiced Arian Christianity, a doctrine the established Roman Catholic population considered heresy. This tension simmered for generations until the mid-6th century, when a figure of immense intellect and charisma, Saint Martin of Braga, orchestrated the mass conversion of the Suebi to Catholicism. This was more than a spiritual shift; it was a masterful political move that integrated the ruling class with their subjects, forging a more unified, stable kingdom.

But their stability was fleeting. To the south and east, a larger, more powerful Germanic force had consolidated its own dominion: the Visigoths. For over a century, the Visigothic kingdom of Toledo viewed the Suebi as a troublesome neighbour. Skirmishes and battles flared along their borders until the ambitious Visigothic king, Leovigild, decided to end the matter for good. In 585, Leovigild’s armies marched north, shattering the Suebi forces and absorbing their kingdom entirely. The Visigoths now ruled the whole of the Iberian Peninsula. For the people in the west, it was merely the exchange of one Germanic master for another. The Visigoths maintained the social structure of a warrior elite ruling a Romanized populace. They were keepers of a complex legal tradition, the Visigothic Code, a fascinating blend of Roman law and Germanic custom that would influence Portuguese law for centuries to come. Architecturally, a few rare gems from this period survive, like the tiny, cruciform Chapel of São Frutuoso de Montélios near Braga, a testament to the enduring influence of Byzantine and Roman design.

For over a century, Visigothic rule seemed secure. But by the dawn of the 8th century, the kingdom was rotting from within. A bitter civil war erupted following the death of King Witiza. The nobles, rejecting Witiza's chosen heir, elected a man named Roderic to the throne. This act plunged the kingdom into chaos, with the supporters of Witiza’s sons seeking any advantage they could find. Legend, thick with the drama of betrayal, whispers that a certain Count Julian, governor of Ceuta in North Africa and a supporter of Witiza's faction, felt personally wronged by King Roderic. In an act of fateful vengeance, he is said to have sent word across the narrow strait of water that now separated Europe from the burgeoning power of the Umayyad Caliphate. He told them that Hispania was ripe for the taking.

In the spring of 711, a Berber commander named Tariq ibn Ziyad led a force of around 7,000 men, mostly North African Berbers, across that strait. They landed at the foot of a great rock which would forever bear his name—Jabal Tariq, the Mountain of Tariq, or Gibraltar. King Roderic, busy fighting rivals in the north, hastily assembled his army and marched south to meet the invaders. The two forces met in July at the Battle of Guadalete. The Visigothic army, plagued by the internal divisions and betrayals that had invited the invasion in the first place, disintegrated. King Roderic was killed, and with his death, the entire Visigothic kingdom collapsed like a house of cards. The invasion became a lightning conquest. City after city fell. Olisipo, the old Roman port, was taken and renamed Al-Ushbuna, which would one day become Lisbon. The advance was relentless, and within a few short years, almost the entire peninsula was under the control of the Umayyad Caliphate, a territory they called Al-Andalus.

The western portion of this new territory, roughly corresponding to modern Portugal, became known as Gharb al-Andalus, 'the West of Al-Andalus'. A new social order was imposed. The ruling class was comprised of Arabs and the North African Berbers who had formed the bulk of the conquering armies. Below them were the local inhabitants. Many, known as 'Muwallads', converted to Islam to gain social and economic advantage. Those who held to their Christian faith, the 'Mozarabs', were permitted to practice their religion, but as 'dhimmi', or protected people, they were required to pay a special tax known as the 'jizya'. This new world brought profound changes. The conquerors introduced sophisticated irrigation techniques, including the 'nora' (water wheel), allowing for the cultivation of new crops that would forever change the landscape and diet: oranges, lemons, peaches, figs, spinach, and rice. Cities, which had declined under the Germans, began to flourish once more. Al-Ushbuna (Lisbon) and particularly Shilb (Silves) in the Algarve became vibrant centers of culture, science, and trade, their marketplaces filled with the sights and smells of silk, spices, and exotic goods from across the Islamic world.

Yet, even as the culture of Al-Andalus reached its zenith, the seeds of its eventual undoing were being sown in the far north. In the rugged, unconquered mountains of Asturias, a small Christian kingdom held out, a remnant of the old Visigothic order. For over a century, this northern frontier was a land of constant, low-level warfare—a brutal cycle of raids and counter-raids. It was a slow, grinding advance. Then, in the year 868, a pivotal moment occurred. A Christian warlord from Galicia named Vímara Peres, a vassal of the King of Asturias, led his forces south and captured the strategic and symbolic settlement of Portus Cale, a fortified Roman town at the mouth of the Douro River. He secured the town and its surrounding region, a territory that would from that point be known as the 'Condado Portucalense'—the County of Portugal. It was a small, embattled frontier territory, a mere sliver of land on the edge of the great Islamic civilization to the south. But it was a beginning. In the capture of this port, a name was born, and the first faint outline of a future nation was drawn upon the map.