Talk:Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula

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Page move

"Islamic invasion of Iberia" gets 16 Google hits. "Islamic conquest of Iberia" gets 213. Please move the page back. Furthermore, the new title doesn't go in according to WP:NPOV, not matter how true you think it is. —Khoikhoi 04:11, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

The Google hits on this issue is a moot point. The title should be accurate and describle the actual character of the event rather than present a revisionist ill-informed spin on this period of history.--CltFn 04:13, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

You're looking at the event from the Spanish side, therefore it's not neutral. We also have to include the Muslim side. --—Khoikhoi 04:28, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Sure both sides need to be included but must be supported by facts and sources. Invasion is defined as "The act of invading, especially the entrance of an armed force into a territory " and that is precisely what happened.--CltFn 04:54, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

What you may see as a "fact" may not be seen as a fact by the other side. Please move it back. —Khoikhoi 05:03, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

This article covers the period of 711 to 718 . That was a period of invasion. Invasion describe what took place accurately . --CltFn 05:21, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm going to contact some other users and ask what they think. —Khoikhoi 05:22, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Conquest.. Invasion.. the differnce between the terms is not important,IMO. however, the invasion/Conquest was not Islamic, less you can prove to me it was requested by Muhammad. It was an invasion by the Moors, thus, it was a Moorish invasion. --Irishpunktom\^talk 10:59, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Muslim (19:4294) - "When the Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) appointed anyone as leader of an army or detachment he would especially exhort him... He would say: Fight in the name of Allah and in the way of Allah. Fight against those who disbelieve in Allah. Make a holy war... When you meet your enemies who are polytheists, invite them to three courses of action. If they respond to any one of these, you also accept it and withhold yourself from doing them any harm. Invite them to (accept) Islam; if they respond to you, accept it from them and desist from fighting against them... If they refuse to accept Islam, demand from them the Jizya. If they agree to pay, accept it from them and hold off your hands. If they refuse to pay the tax, seek Allah's help and fight them."

Quran (9:5) - "So when the sacred months have passed away, then slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them captive and besiege them and lie in wait for them in every ambush, then if they repent and keep up prayer and pay the poor-rate, leave their way free to them."

Quran (9:29) - "Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued."

Invasion and war against non-Muslims to convert, subjugate, enslave, or annihilate them is a basic tenet of Islam, which has been demonstrated consistently since Mohammed invaded Mecca. To pretend Islam is anything other than a martial theocracy is either a demonstration of taqiyya or general scholastic ignorance. 16:29, 01 January 2016 (UTC)

I was thinking the exact same thing. It was not an "Islamic" invasion/conquest (whichever word you want to use), it was a Moorish conquest/invasion. I'm sure, at least at that time, that not all Moors (ie. Berbers) were Muslim, although most would have been. That they were muslim was pure chance. Other non-Mulsim Berbers also entered during the conquest, including some Berber Jews and others. In regards to the choice of invasion over conquest, I don't necessarily have a problem with either, but to avoid POV I'd go for conquest. Invasion is too emotional. I see no purpose in changing to invasion, it would be as useful as renaiming "Spanish conquest of the Americas" to "Spanish invasion of the Americas". Al-Andalus 03:47, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Well, I was just an Islamic invasion made mainly by Moors. If anyone has got any doubt about this just consult the capitulations between Abd-al-Aziz ibn Muzza ibn Nussair (the Arabian and Islamic governor of North Africa) and Tudmir (Visigothic dux of Western Spain(?)) to surrender the current Spanish region of Murcia, the capitulations began with the clasic "In the name of Allah! ... ". So where is the doubt?

Threshold 16:37, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

When Muslims eat, they begin with the "Classic" formulation "In the name of Allah...." it's traditional to invoke that formulation at the beginning of anything, a supplication to grace, from eating food to setting out an a journey, to marraige, to prayer to contracts etc. No doubt the army was predominantly berber and almost entirely muslim because of both logistics and ideology but the top brass was arab and umayyad, in fact the only place the umayyad continued on after the abbasid revolt was by escaping to Cordoba. Any rate, while Europeans may only have seen then as a monolithic entity of "muslims" or "islamics" much as they may have overlooked the difference between the franks and visigoths it helps to be specific if only to differentiate between the different periods and rulers, kingdoms and empires who all even in the crusades labelled simply as the muslims. The best analogy I can raise is calling Indians and Chinese Asians or even Vietnamese and Chinese Asians. Hope that helps.--Tigeroo 09:01, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

As per this discussion I am moving the article to read conquest vs. invasion, and moorish to umayyad as conquest also describes the political affect of the incorporation of the territory into Ummayyad fold.--Tigeroo 09:32, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

The conquest was achieved by the Umayyads - this basic knowledge is needed in order understand political and military developments in Al-Andalus and elsewhere. Good changes. --Ian Pitchford 12:44, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

---

It's an invasion because Moorish occupied the Iberian peninsula, killing a great part of the population and subjugated the natives for 7 centuries.

Do you prefer to call it invitation to drink a cup of tea? You are not entitled to distort the history of a country. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.202.7.216 (talk) 18:52, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

---

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.202.7.216 (talk) 18:47, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Iberia?

Well, now that you have achieved a consensus about some of the parts of the title of this article, let me introduce another question: There is no reason for calling Iberia the lands conquered by the Moorish in 711, for several reasons:

• Iberia is an ambiguous term, than can mistake about the historical time of the conquest. It was the Greek term for the peninsula, and also refers to Iberian people, who had dissapeared as a group hundreds of years before.
• The land conquered by the Moorish was called Hispania by their inhabitans under Visigothic domain, and so it was called before under the Roman Empire, that determined most of the cultural references of the Peninsula before the Umayyads, including language.
• If we take the name of the conquerors we should use Al-Ándalus, but I think this would be an error, because what was conquered properly was Hispania, not Al-Andalus.
• The term Iberia is scarcely used nowadays, and it is commonly used in the form "Iberian Peninsula" to limit a geographical precise entity. Iberia is known nowadays in the Spanish speaking (and I think it could happen also to English) more as an Airlines trade group than anything related to geography :-))

Therefore, I think that the title should be changed to Umayyad Conquest of Hispania, if we prefer a historical emphasis in the title, or the longer Umayyad Conquest of the Iberian Peninsula, if we prefer a geographical emphasis. I rather prefer the former, that gives more information about the historical moment. any opinion?--Garcilaso 17:25, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

I would support the former too. Regards, E Asterion ^{u talking to me?} 21:42, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

I would vote for the geographical context (Going to ignore the expansion into Septamania due to size and time period) because technically unless the Visigoths also called their land Hispania (Vandalucia theory for the Arab name Andalus) the Roman province was gone, and Byzantines (Eastern Roman Empire)who succeeded are probably the ones who preferred to use the term Iberia for region. (I am guessing here, because they are the only Greek speaking power with influence enough to introduce a new name into Europe and who countinued to claim the title and inheritance of the Romans). Personally no real preference, just unsure on what the conventions are, everywhere I've run across the reference it has always read the Iberian peninsula vs. the political regions. As an aside did not the Visigoth Kingdom extend into Aquitania as well prior to the arrival of the Umayyads.--Tigeroo 04:50, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree, of course, with Tigeroo, in saying that every title or definition has nuances, and it is very difficult to explain an exact historical concept in less than ten words. The article, not the title, would make that distinctions. It could be good to have that magic word that would be exact, but, as you say, not purely all Hispania was conquered and not all that was conquered was Hispania. It is a rough aproximation. Anyway, the same problem goes with Iberian Peninsula, that was not conquered in its integrity, and, as you say, the Moorish also reached up to Poitiers. But that incursion beyond the Pirinees can hardly be considered an conquest for its ephemeral character. (If we are precise, the conquest was not even made by the Umayyads themselves, but by their Moorish leaders Tariq and Musa ibn Nusair, and afterwards, it was used as a shelter by Abd ar-Rahman I, the Umayyad prince, only afted the conquest was complete).

Indeed, Hispania was the term used to call either political and geographically the region, and here you have some text from the Etymologiae of Saint Isidore of Seville (by the way, for his effort in compailing the knowledge of his moment and also because of his visible limitations could be considered a precursor of the Wikipedia:-))[1]

Book 14: DE TERRA ET PARTIBUS (About Earth and its divisions)

4.2 Europa autem in tertiam partem orbis divisa incipit a flumine Tanai, descendens ad occasum per septentrionalem Oceanum usque in fines Hispaniae.

4.19 Italia autem et Hispania idcirco Hesperiae dictae quod Graeci Hespero stella navigent et in Italia et in Hispania. Quae hac ratione discernuntur; aut enim Hesperiam solam dicis et significas Italiam, aut addis ultimam et significas Hispaniam, quia in occidentis est fine.

4.28 Hispania prius ab Ibero amne Iberia nuncupata, postea ab Hispalo Hispania cognominata est. Ipsa est et vera Hesperia, ab Hespero stella occidentali dicta.

It is interesting also the 9th book, in which he talks, as an historian about the Iberian people. As you can see, he the higest thinker of the Visigothic period calls Hispania the region and the political entity in is days, and also remembers that Romans also did, and talks about the origin of the Iberian population as pure history. Other less cultivated Visigoths wouldn´t even have mentioned (and ignored) that historical name. So, as you can see, Iberia is completely out of context, and I don´t Know how Bizantines(?) called it, but they weren´t in Hispania an directly influent political and cultural group. (Anyway, I suspect deeply that they also called it Hispania, dont forget that they were origined as an extension of Roman Empire culture.)

Therefore, I still plead for Hispania.--Garcilaso 11:17, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

These are some maps with some differences (I suppose whether they represent different moments or different theories, but all of them showing the Visigothic Kingdom after the absortion of the Bizantine territories and before the incorporation of the kingdom of the Suevos by Leovigildo.[2][3][4]

These are some maps of the first moments of the Moorish advance [5] and of different moments of Al-Ándalus and the Reconquista[6]. As can be seen, with the addition of the Suevii Kindgom, the firsts Umayyad Al-Ándalus corresponds quite good to the Visigothic Hispania, missing the territories beyond the Cantabre Mountains. So it is more inexact to refer to Iberian Peninsula, that was never entirely conquered, than to the Visigothic Hispania, that almost completely matches.--Garcilaso 14:43, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

WikiProject class rating

This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 04:58, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Reworking

I intend to rework this page substantially. The problem is that the detailed accounts of the invasion are essential legends written hundreds of years later. None of the the stuff about Julian is remotely contemporary, for example. I propose to start by talking about what we actually know, and then split off the later inventions and describe them as such. We also need to talk about the analysis of whether the invasion was intentional, or just an unusually large raid that got lucky. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bge20 (talk • contribs) 11:30, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree whole-heartedly with the sentiment. Even though my class assignment does not require me to go beyond editing in my sandbox, I will continue to engage with this page intellectually. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dramkis (talk • contribs) 04:59, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

Battle of Poitiers

Unless there are objections. I'm removing the sentence(s) about Charles Martel. This article is about the Umayyad invasion of Hispania, whereby the Battle of Poitiers is extraneous. --Kansas Bear (talk) 04:13, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

You didn't wait for anyone to object!

I do object. How extraneous can it be, when it's due to the invasion of Hispania that the Muslims ended up in Gaul/France when they did? It also shows how the invasion was not some neatly contained event; it affected Hispania's neighbor, i.e., had broader consequences. SamEV (talk) 06:14, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Count Julian

The article now states:

What are available are a number of stories that might more properly be described as legends. The manner of King Roderic's ascent to the throne is unclear; there are accounts of dispute with the son of his predecessor Wittiza, and accounts that Wittiza's family fled to Tangier and solicited help from there. Numismatic evidence suggests some division of royal authority, with several coinages being struck. There is also a story of one Julian, count of Ceuta, whose wife or daughter was raped by Roderic and who also sought help from Tangier. However, these stories are legendary and not included in the earliest accounts of the conquest.[2]

I think Julian is dismissed way too lightly here. He is mentioned in the earliest Arab sources as far as I know. He also has a separate detailed page of his on wikipedia. Any ideas how to rewrite this? Bazuz (talk) 21:36, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

I think the paragraph above is fairly comprehensive and correct about the topic, but as I see it a more straight but cautious approach could be provided, like "it seems that", "according to X sources", "x is thought to have ...". The best of course is a citation anyway. Regards Iñaki LL (talk) 08:18, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

But is it correct to assert that the story of Julian is "legendary and not included in the earliest accounts of the conquest" when it is included in the earliest Muslim accounts? (For instance, in Ibn 'Abd al-Hakam's chronicle). The earliest accounts referred to in the article now are apparently the Christian sources which are much later and poorer, so there is apparently a case of over-reliance on some sources and neglect of others here. What do you think? Bazuz (talk) 10:45, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

Hi, the Wikipedia favours secondary sources rather than primary ones. I think it´s safe to cite what a primary source states if it´s a reputed one, but I´d mention the source. I agree that there are too many Christian sources, often of dubious reliability and based on Western Christian legends. However, Wikipedia is no place for personal research. Iñaki LL (talk) 21:03, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

My comment is in regards to the angle of this section. In my surface scratching research (I'm just familiarizing myself with this), I came across this text on the Julian, Count of Ceuta page (under the Rift with Roderic section) itself: "...Later ballads and chronicles inflated this tale, Muslims making her out an innocent virgin who was ravished, Christians making her a seductress. In Spanish she came to be known as la Cava Rumía....". Even though the page indicates that it is merely one story, it fails to acknowledge what the other stories are. I do see that sources are lacking so in any event, these two pages need to be reconciled to avoid conflicting with each other. Saltybalty (talk) 06:53, 8 June 2015

Hi Saltybalty, I suggest you add it yourself, but remember that secondary sources are preferred. The author you cite is a later source, both Western and African/Asian sources are fraught with legends during the Middle Ages, but the account may have some relevance or reasons to think the story is (partly) credible. Cite the author, and that should do. Iñaki LL (talk) 22:18, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Possible Original Research in section "Background"

Here are some quotations from the section that motivated me to insert the tag:

1. Most of the first paragraph
   1. "regarded as reliable but often vague"
   2. "There are no contemporary Muslim accounts"
   3. "much coloured by the writers' sense of what was proper"
   4. "much coloured ... by contemporary politics
   5. characterization of source "Al-Maqqari"
   6. "This paucity of sources means that any specific or detailed claims need to be regarded with caution."
2. Since my original tagging, User Iñaki LL: inserted citations in the second parapgraph (thank you). However:
   1. "What are available are a number of stories that might more properly be described as legends"
   2. "The manner of King Roderic's ascent to the throne is unclear; there are accounts" - if there are accounts, why is it unclear?

—Boruch Baum (talk) 09:13, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

The paragraph in question is sufficiently tagged by now. Adding tags to just every phrase does not shed more light or help building a reliable and readable WP. The paragraphs still tagged as wanting verifiability are not mine, but are reasonable enough as to give it credit if you have some insight into the matter. That it is unclear is just evident to anyone with some knowledge on the topic, and it goes the same about Al-Maqqari. Claiming caution about the source and its narrative is no extra information. However, I left the citation template at the top. Iñaki LL (talk) 06:20, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

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Suppression of reference

Hello, you do not even try to check the source I posted, you immediately deleted my sources.

Several Arab-Muslim historians mention that Tariq would have decided by himself (which would cause the anger of his superiors) to land in Spain, and this must be taken into account

See here: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariq_ibn_Ziyad

the French wikipedia article is completely sourced.

Sorry for my bad English, I am Portuguese.

Marcel Baron 14 January 2018 13:57 (UTC)

I am the main contributor to this article and, coming down to detail, there is nothing that leads us to think that the invasion of Hispania was a premeditated plan. Information available suggests that developments on the ground escalated from an initial military support by Tariq to the officialist faction led by Achila II on into a full-blown political takeover of the Visigothic Kingdom. This is suggested by Roger Collins. Collins, Roger (1989). The Arab Conquest of Spain 710-797. Iñaki LL (talk) 13:46, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

@Iñaki LL: your edit summery 'Rv fully sourced info...' is strange since I only added further referenced content and did not remove the sourced info added by Marcel. Is there a specific reason for your removal of the sourced content I added? Regards - Swazzo (talk) 21:31, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

@Swazzo: Um...I took a look at this, where no mention is done to the Caliph. Also the source that would support your claim does not say anything about any Caliphs. Plus from what I can remember, Collins does not support a Caliph sending orders to invade Hispania. Regards Iñaki LL (talk) 21:54, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

@Iñaki LL: I also took a look at the source added by Marcel and it does not say anything about any Caliphs. It instead refers to his wali. Don't get me wrong, Collins is well-respected historian, but I think it's fair to include differing information from other reliable sources. Swazzo (talk) 22:56, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

The thing is none of the sources cite a Caliph, so why add it? A wali is cited, but I think it refers to the next commander breaking into the Peninsula, al-Nusayr. Iñaki LL (talk) 23:06, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

What about Was a Time When... the Moors Ruled Spain, p.17? or Past and Present, Chapter 7. The Islamic World, 800-1300, Tariq ibn Ziyad? Swazzo (talk) 02:55, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

There was a time when the Moors Ruled Spain, is self published(AuthorHouse), and the author has written a similarly titled book about the Romans. Do you have information concerning this author?

Your link goes to this:

• Civilizations Past and Present, Single Volume Edition, By CTI Reviews,[7]

and not what you wrote, Civilizations Past and Present, Chapter 7. The Islamic World, 800-1300

"Civilizations Past and Present, Single Volume Edition" to be a testing book, can not find a publisher and I see no author. Doubtful RS.

For:

• Civilizations Past and Present, Chapter 7. The Islamic World, 800-1300

There is no match on google books. --Kansas Bear (talk) 04:10, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

Yes, it's Civilizations Past and Present, Single Volume Edition. I was referring to the location of the info since the ebook does not provide any page numbers. Swazzo (talk) 04:27, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

Care to explain this edit?

• Under the orders of Caliph Al-Walid I...

Referenced using, Moorish Spain, Richard Fletcher, page 1. Where exactly does it state Caliph Al-Walid I ordered the invasion on page 1? --Kansas Bear (talk) 05:34, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

A slip on my part, I thought that a "Berber army under Arab leadership" would suffice. Can we cite Civilizations Past and Present, Single Volume Edition? Swazzo (talk) 08:03, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

I do not know what the point is of adding the Caliph, it does not look like precise or safe information, it is speculative altogether. Not having further time right now, and would need to confirm it in detail, but Collins, who elaborates on the matter, does not find any evidence to support such claim. Iñaki LL (talk) 08:17, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

Swazzo, Civilizations Past and Present, Single Volume Edition, does not appear to be a reliable source. Also, please quit using {{od}} for your responses. Use : to indent your responses. --Kansas Bear (talk) 08:19, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

@Swazzo: The source says nothing of the Caliph, so do not alter the statement, that is WP:SYNTH or (as bad) misrepresentation of sources. Thanks Iñaki LL (talk) 09:44, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

This is getting a bit boring, Swazzo. Please do not alter the content of sources, that is WP:SYNTH at best (please read it), if not WP:OR and misrepresentation of sources. You may add that phrase in another place if relevant. Thanks Iñaki LL (talk) 10:05, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

@Iñaki LL: please tell me, what do you find faulty in the sentence:

During the caliphate of the Umayyad Caliph Al-Walid I, forces led by Tariq ibn Ziyad disembarked in early 711 in Gibraltar at the head of an army consisting of Berbers (north-western Africa).

The sentence does not mention or imply that the Umayyad conquest was a premeditated plan in any way, shape, or form, it simply states that it took place during the reign of Al Walid I. Also, a source has to actually support its adjacent claim and far more than 'Forces led by Tariq ibn Ziyad' is cited and quoted. I moved the source to a relevant section where the event is discussed in detail. Regards - Swazzo (talk) 20:14, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

@Swazzo: I am trying to be didactic but you are not hearing, right? Iñaki LL (talk) 21:26, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

Is there some unknown reason why Swazzo is removing the source, The Muslim Conquest and Settlement of North Africa and Spain? And continuing to edit war to remove it? --Kansas Bear (talk) 21:38, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

I did not remove the source. I only moved it to the invasion section and added the quoted material. Placing it next to 'forces led by Tariq ibn Ziyad' seems flawed since the source covers far more than just that. Swazzo (talk) 22:11, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

It looks to me you are not hearing or taking advise. Iñaki LL (talk) 22:39, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

@Swazzo: You are edit-warring again. I replied in your talk page. Thanks Iñaki LL (talk) 23:06, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

Even though this is WP:BLUE and WP:POPE, I have added a source stating that the Umayyad conquest took place during the reign of Al-Walid I. Swazzo (talk) 00:57, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

I cannot read the page you cite, but back again, you are not hearing, you are welcome to add your information in another suitable place, where it does not collide with WP:SYNTH or WP:OR. The fact that the initial Umayyad conquest happened under that caliph's rule does not imply that it had nothing to do with Tariq's initiative. You have not engaged in DRN, and wasting the time of productive editors is disruptive editing. Thanks Iñaki LL (talk) 08:47, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

The policies you keep citing do not apply. Considering the article is titled the Umayyad Conquest of Hispania, it's only appropriate to list the Umayyad caliph whose reign saw the conquest occur in the lead section. Every single claim in the sentence is referenced and nothing collides. I added a reliable source yet you removed it. This is a simple case of WP:JUSTDONTLIKEIT. Swazzo (talk) 09:11, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

You are edit-warring again. Does your reference cite in page 325 that Tariq, reigning Caliph Al Walid I, initiated his military campaign? Really? I ping Kansas Bear for his knowledge and access to bibliography if he wishes to intervene Iñaki LL (talk) 09:19, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

User:Swazzo - You have already been warned to discuss your edits. User:NeilN - Unfortunately, I think that it is type time for 48-hour block. Robert McClenon (talk) 12:13, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

User:Swazzo - You were asked to discuss your edits at DRN. You didn't discuss. You have been asked here. Just saying that you are making your edits again is not discussion. Robert McClenon (talk) 12:42, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

I've discussed the edits with the user for more than enough. I've been accused for removing sources when I only moved them, meanwhile, Iñaki LL actually removes a source and nothing is said about that. Swazzo (talk) 12:57, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

User:Swazzo - See below. You have not discussed the edits with the user enough. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:22, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Robert McClenon, what are your thoughts on this? Swazzo (talk) 13:01, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

User:Swazzo - You were properly notified of the filing of a request at the dispute resolution noticeboard on 17 January 2018. The volunteers and other editors waited for you to make a statement. That thread was closed and a thread was opened at the edit-warring noticeboard when it became clear that you were not planning to discuss your edits. If you want to discuss your edits when you come off block, you may discuss here, and if you make a reasonable effort to discuss (which you have not until now), you may file a new request at DRN. Just saying that you are making your edits again is not discussion. You had an opportunity to use DRN. You still have opportunities when you come off block. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:22, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

User Robert McClenon, may I kindly have your opinion on the matter? User NeilN asked me to provide a quote from the source which I did on my talk page. Swazzo (talk) 22:02, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

Provide the quote here and discuss with the other editors. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 22:18, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

Will do. Here is the quote from the source:

"WALID, IBN 'ABDUL MALIK AL- (668-715). Sixth Umayyad caliph during whose reign (705-715) the conquest of Spain began in 711 and the eastern part of the empire expanded to the Indus river." Adamec, Ludwig W. (2009). Historical Dictionary of Islam. Scarecrow Press. p. 325.

User Iñaki LL claims the cited sentence "During the caliphate of the Umayyad Caliph Al-Walid I, forces led by Tariq ibn Ziyad disembarked in early 711 in Gibraltar at the head of an army consisting of Berbers (north-western Africa)." is causing colliding and WP:SYNTH/WP:OR. Swazzo (talk) 00:24, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

Iñaki LL, I have provided the quote from the source where it states that the Umayyad conquest took place during the reign of Al-Walid I. I noticed that you used "initiated" in your last comment, which leads me to think that you are not hearing since I explained that the sentence "does not mention or imply that the Umayyad conquest was a premeditated plan in any way, shape, or form, it simply states that it took place during the reign of Al Walid I.". The sentence does not collide with W:SYNTH or WP:OR as every claim is referenced. Do you still have any reasons why the cited sentence should not be added? Swazzo (talk) 05:09, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

Iñaki LL, here is a source that mentions Tariq Ibn Ziyad:

"Islam first came to Spain, under the rule of the Umayyad caliph Al-Walid ibn 'Abd al-Malik, when in the year 711, the famous Berber commander, Tariq ibn Ziyad, landed on Spanish soil near the small mountain that still bears his name".

The reference cites the caliph Al Walid I during Tariq's intervention, as you requested. Swazzo (talk) 00:01, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

Reply to Request

User:Swazzo - I do not entirely understand, but I think that you are avoiding constructive discussion, and I am not sure why you are asking me at all. I was not involved in the discussion about edits to this article until a request was made at the dispute resolution noticeboard. The volunteers at that noticeboard and other editors waited for you to make a statement, and then that thread was closed. I have not been editing this article and am not familiar with the dispute. (I am aware that the invasion began a 750-year war, the Reconquista.) I am not sure what matter I am being asked my opinion about, and I am not sure that I have an opinion, and I am not sure why I am being asked for my opinion. You say that you provided a quote on your talk page. As User:NeilN reminds you, the place to discuss the article is here, the article talk page, and providing a quote on your talk page is a diversion. If you wish to edit this article, discuss the edits here, not somewhere else, and discuss them with other editors who are familiar with the discussion here. It should not be necessary to ask me for my opinion, but my opinion at this time is that you are wasting my time, the time of the other editors, and the time of NeilN. If you engage in any more distracting or diversionary tactics, I will file a report at WP:ANI to ask that you be topic-banned. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:51, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

I apologize for the bother, I just hoped for a third opinion on the subject. Swazzo (talk) 00:13, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

Swazzo, I will put this very simple to you: You are bringing two sources, please read thoroughly WP:SYNTH for the last time. "Do not combine material from multiple sources to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by any of the sources." I requested this to you, that you have not provided. Your source does not state anything of Tariq landing/intervening in Hispania during Al Walid.

In close-up consideration we do not know if Tariq was acting from within the Umayyad empire or not, no matter what turn developments took later that year or the following years. No source states that. I offered you other options to place your claim to avoid WP:SYNTH, you reverted and avoided consensus. Please do not bother productive editors again. Iñaki LL (talk) 10:39, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

Iñaki LL, here is a source that mentions Tariq Ibn Ziyad:

"Islam first came to Spain, under the rule of the Umayyad caliph Al-Walid ibn 'Abd al-Malik, when in the year 711, the famous Berber commander, Tariq ibn Ziyad, landed on Spanish soil near the small mountain that still bears his name".

The reference cites the caliph Al Walid I during Tariq's intervention, as you requested. Swazzo (talk) 00:01, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

Thank you. It would have been much easier and spared us a lot of time if this had been added from the very beginning, and not sources stating otherwise. Also, breaking the thread may be taken as disruptive, so please pay attention to this: continue the thread in a logical way, indenting it, and inserting your reply at the bottom of it. Iñaki LL (talk) 09:29, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

I removed the mention of Tariq's ethnicity since it is disputed per his article. Swazzo (talk) 23:17, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

That is what the source goes; also, WP is not a source for WP. I know there are doubts over his identity and this is the lead section, where the main information lies, so I would suggest Marcel Baron to add that information somewhere in the text body in the right manner. Iñaki LL (talk) 23:51, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

It is mentioned in the chronology section. Swazzo (talk) 00:19, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Also, I was referring to the sources in the origin section of Tariq's article and not simply WP. Swazzo (talk) 00:24, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

References

Expulsion of native moriscos in 1614

Re this edit: [8]

The text before you edited read: "The last wave of expulsions from Spain of the native population of Muslim descent took place in 1614." As the link makes clear, this refers to expulsion of established ("native") denizens of Spain who were of Moorish descent ("moriscos"). These were Christians who had lived for generations in Spain. They were native in the same sense that any other long-standing population of Spain (Basques, Celts, Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans, Goths, Jews) were native. You are native of a place if you are born there, certainly if your ancestors have lived there for generations.

Your replacement text: "The last wave of expulsions of Muslims from Spain by native population took place in 1614." This refers to Muslims, though the moriscos were not Muslim but Christian, and implies that they were not themselves "native". This is incorrect. Indeed, the moriscos included many who were descended from the pre-Muslim population, and in any event, the rulers who promulgated the expulsion had ancestry of far more recent Spanish origin than the moriscos.

I agree that the original text is awkward, but my replacement text ("The last wave of expulsions of Spaniards of Muslim descent took place in 1614.") reflects the sense of the original, while yours does not.

-- Elphion (talk) 16:15, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

I agree with Elphion. While the first decades of the Arab-Berber takeover in Hispania they may have remained separate from local population for a while, inter-marriage was as real as it gets. Plus the Muwallad were population previous to the military intervention starting in 711. Also, inhabitants living in a place for 400, 700 or 900 years in a place, belong in that place, needless to say.

Also, "The last wave of expulsions of Muslims from Spain by native population" sounds, to say the least, perverse. The Andalusi population was expelled by the decisions made by Spanish monarchs, the elites (Church, nobility, local elites) and their armies.Iñaki LL (talk) 23:04, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

Taxation

The article mentions the Muslim population not being taxed under Umayyad rule.

Moreover, al-Hurr restored lands to their previous Christian landowners, which may have added greatly to the revenue of the Umayyad governors and the caliph of Damascus, since only non-Muslims were subject to taxation.

Is there a source for this ? What about Zakat ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 37.170.235.43 (talk) 01:55, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Most surely they were taxed one way or another, and certainly the Berbers resented a lot the discrimination they received for that. However, I think Collins refers to special taxation for non-Muslims, the Jizya. Regards Iñaki LL (talk) 17:17, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

Marca Hispanica?

Just taking a cursory look at this article, I noticed that it does not discuss the formation of the Marca Hispanica. That seems an oversight, yes? I would have thought the formation of Marca Hispanica, would be the significant event marking the end of the Umayyad expansion. At the very least a "See also" would seem warranted? Bdushaw (talk) 23:07, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

The Marca Hispanica is a later event circa 800, so no need to cite it in the body. I am fine with adding it in the See, also section. Iñaki LL (talk) 08:19, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

Background section clarity

The background section as of right now moves from a paragraph discussing the lack of contemporary sources for the conquest to the fact that King Roderic's ascension to the Visigothic throne was contentious and chronicled poorly. In terms of a linking paragraph, how much detail should be given? Presumably, a basic mention that Hispania was, prior to the conquest, controlled by Visigothic tribes (including King Roderic), but beyond that, what is necessary? Is a description of problems within the Visigothic kingdom also necessary?

--Apkrishel (talk) 01:40, 23 April 2020 (UTC)

Flag icon

This edit [9] reverted the substition of "Flag of Umayyad.svg" for "White flag 3 to 2.svg". The former seems preferable, as it has a light border indicating that there is something there, while the latter results in a patch of blank white space. With the former it's much clearer what is going on, and no reason was given for the reversion. -- Elphion (talk) 17:49, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

Requested move 15 March 2023

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Moved as proposed - with a caveat. There were two separate issues that both supporters and opposers seemed to tackle distinctly and independently: who did the conquering, and who got conquered.

1. Consensus to use "Muslim" over "Umayyad" was emphatically found per common name, recognizability, consistency, etc. The NGrams offered were decisive, as well. Other possibilities (well, basically just "Arab") were considered, but the consistently preferred title was "Muslim", which was the most-attested in reliable sources. "Arab" remains a reasonable alternative to this title, however.

2. The more interesting and difficult question was the final word of the article title. "Spain" was preferred by a mild majority, but many reasonable objections were held. It's true that we follow the sources and it's true that we tend to title historical articles based on how the area was called at the time, and there was a fierce (though quite polite) discussion about what exactly that common name for the landmass at that time is or was. Even some of the people who opposed "Muslim" thought that "Hispania" was not quite the right object of the prepositional phrase. While a weak consensus for "Spain" was found, I recommend a further move request to specifically examine the possibility of "Iberia", which was suggested by a few and which encountered only a small amount of resistance, but which also didn't enjoy widespread acceptance. (non-admin closure) Red Slash 04:44, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

---

Vacated former close; see related discussion on closer's talk page
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. The result of the move request was: no consensus. First and foremost, I'll mention: a variety of different title permutations were discussed in this RM, but the only proposals to receive any significant degree of support were (1) the proposed title and (2) the existing article title. Thus, my closure summary will focus on arguments that pertain to the elements "Umayyad", "Muslim", "Hispania", and "Spain". A variety of arguments were leveled throughout this RM, and the main points of discussion were as follows: WP:COMMONNAME. The original nomination centered on the claim that "Muslim conquest of Spain" was the common name for the event in question. In the discussion, it was convincingly demonstrated that a sizable plurality of sources do indeed use that term. However, some users raised concerns about the scope of the source search; it was argued that some of the sources only referred to conquests of the modern country of Spain (as opposed to the rest of the Iberian Peninsula), and that the term "Muslim conquest of Spain" was predominantly used by older sources and might not reflect current-day usage. These concerns were not addressed by supporters of the WP:COMMONNAME argument, leading me to find that no consensus emerged on this point. WP:PRECISE with respect to "Umayyad" vs. "Muslim". Some participants felt that "Umayyad" was more precise, due to identifying the specific polity that perpetrated the conquest. Others noted that "Umayyad" might create ambiguity with the establishment of the Emirate of Córdoba, another Umayyad-led conquest in the same region, and that "Muslim" was sufficiently precise in an era where only one Muslim polity existed. Neither side of this debate appeared to convince the other, leading me to find that no consensus emerged on this point. Appropriateness of "Spain" as a term. Some participants asserted that using "Spain" would lead readers to assume that the article referred to the modern country of Spain (which would be anachronistic) or to only the land controlled by modern Spain (which would be inappropriately over-precise due to excluding Portugal). Other participants argued that "Spain" is commonly used in scholarly sources to refer to the medieval Iberian Peninsula in its entirety, and thus that it is appropriate for usage in the title. Again, neither argument prevailed over the other, and no consensus emerged. WP:RECOGNIZABLE. Some participants argued that the current title (the term "Umayyad" in particular) would be insufficiently recognizable to readers. This view gained some traction, but was also contested briefly. On the whole, I do find a consensus that "Muslim" would be a more recognizable term than "Umayyad" in this context. WP:NPOV. It was argued that the conflation of the various caliphates through the "Muslim" label would be upholding a systemic bias that current-day scholarship is now seeking to push back against. This argument appeared to go uncontested. It was also argued that the contestation of the COMMONNAME claims (as detailed above) was inappropriately introducing a POV to the source analysis, but testing the credibility and applicability of sources is a common practice on Wikipedia, so I found this latter line of argument to be weak. On the whole, I find the NPOV arguments suggest that the term "Umayyad" is less prone to NPOV issues. WP:CONSISTENT. It was argued that using the phrasing "Muslim conquest" would be more consistent with other article titles about the caliphates' military campaigns. This claim was accurate at the time it was made; however, after the topic was raised, RMs were opened on Muslim conquest of Persia and Muslim conquest of Egypt. Thus, while the WP:CONSISTENT argument does seem to support usage of the term "Muslim", the presence of currently-open RMs could change that in the immediate future. Consequently, I have weighed this factor relatively little in my final determination. On the whole, most of the disputes around different facets of titling proved to be intractable. I ultimately find that this discussion resulted in no consensus for any title. The title that would come closest to achieving consensus would probably be "Muslim conquest of Hispania", but I don't feel that the weight of argument would justify a WP:NOGOODOPTIONS move to that title. Instead, the best way to handle this lack of consensus is to remain at the long-term stable title of Umayyad conquest of Hispania. (non-admin closure) ModernDayTrilobite (talk • contribs) 16:23, 23 March 2023 (UTC) The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Umayyad conquest of Hispania → Muslim conquest of Spain – This is easily the most WP:COMMONNAME in book sources for this event in history. According to Ngram viewer it is more than twice as common as "Arab conquest of Spain", "Muslim conquest of Iberia" or "Moorish conquest of Spain", whereas the current title does not register at all on Ngram Viewer - not once - and there's nothing on Google Books either. I've also scanned in other names such as "Moorish conquest of Iberia" or "Arab conquest of Iberia" - they are recorded as uncommon - while all the other options including those with "Hispania" also fail to register. As an encyclopaedia we should follow the majority of WP:RS, although there is nothing wrong with mentioning other names commonly used in the literature as well. But this one appears to be quite obscure. Bermicourt (talk) 09:13, 15 March 2023 (UTC) Here are the relative stats:

Muslim conquest of Spain - 1838

Arab conquest of Spain - 767

Moorish conquest of Spain - 745

Muslim conquest of Iberia - 616

Arab conquest of Iberia - 49

Moorish conquest of Iberia - 39

Arab conquest of Hispania - 0

Moorish conquest of Hispania - 0

Muslim conquest of Hispania - 0

Umayyad conquest of Hispania - 0

Umayyad conquest of Iberia - 0

Umayyad conquest of Spain - 0

Neither "Umayyad" nor "Hispania" occur in any combination with the other terms in any of the sources. It is not clearly not a concept accepted in scholarly circles. Bermicourt (talk) 13:55, 15 March 2023 (UTC) — Relisting. ModernDayTrilobite (talk • contribs) 13:45, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

Survey

• Oppose per WP:PRECISE, since 1) it was indeed the Umayyads who conquered and not some other Muslim kingdom, 2) Hispania as a whole was conquered, not just Spain. The redirect from Muslim conquest of Spain is more than adequate. 〜Festucalex • talk • contribs 09:28, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

Oppose: There is no clear common name for this, as the same Ngrams referenced above shows when used case-insensitively, and so the guideline in effect is WP:NDESC. And, as noted above, 'Umayyad' is the precise term for the power that conducted the conquest. 'Islamic' and 'Arab' both fall short in presenting a one-dimensional and POV framework, one religious, one ethnic, when the reality is that the Umayyad forces were multi-ethnic, in this case Arab and Berber, and, while Muslim, they were not obviously motivated by religion in this context (such as in a zealotry or holy war-type sense) any more than they were by the more mundane and based motivators of land, power and status, hence 'conquest'. As for the geography, any source using the term 'Spain' exposes its own poverty. 'Medieval Spain' one could perhaps get away with, but otherwise it is either 'Hispania' or 'the Iberian Peninsula' - there are no substitutions for these other than pure anachronism. Umayyad conquest of the Iberian peninsula might be the truest scholarly orthodoxy, as seen in a range of sources, since 'Hispania' is more aptly applied to the Roman province that preceded Visigothic rule, even though the name persisted thereafter, but then there's also WP:CONCISE to worry about. Iskandar323 (talk) 18:31, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

• Support Current title fails on almost all points described in WP:CRITERIA. The current title is not "based on how reliable English-language sources refer to the article's subject". The current title is not recognizable to most readers; it is not natural--most readers would not think to search for the title; it is overly precise--the title only needs to be precise enough to distinguish it from other similar articles; concision and consistency appear to be a wash.Glendoremus (talk) 19:26, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

Recognizable to who? The guideline for recognizability is this: "Recognizability – The title is a name or description of the subject that someone familiar with, although not necessarily an expert in, the subject area will recognize." Spain is simply not correct. Using Muslim and Spain here is like calling the Mongol invasion of the Khwarazmian Empire the 'Tengrist invasion of Kazakhstan', even though Kazakhstan didn't exist back then, and invasions are conducted by polities, groups or political powers, not religious demographics. Iskandar323 (talk) 20:19, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

My issue with recognizability has to do with "Umayyad". I realize that the anachronistic use of "Spain" is a perennial hot topic for Wikipedians. I think Moorish Conquest of Iberia (or Hispania) would be a reasonable compromise. Glendoremus (talk) 20:41, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

• Strong Support "Muslim conquest of Spain" as proposed. Might reluctantly also accept "Muslim conquest of Hispania", but oppose all other proposals ("Moorish", "Iberia", etc.). There is no "other Muslim kingdom" in 711. There is only one Muslim political entity (the caliphate) at this time. It is consistent with "Muslim conquest of Persia", "Muslim conquest of Egypt", "Muslim conquest of the Maghreb", etc. It is not only more recognizable, it is actually a bit clearer, as there actually is a later Umayyad conquest of Spain (in 756), that is more properly distinguished as "Umayyad" (in defiance of the then ruling Abbasids of the caliphate). But there is no distinction at this stage. Walrasiad (talk) 08:25, 16 March 2023 (UTC)
• Strong oppose so we are just going to exclude Portugal from this article, which at the time was not politically, geographically or ethnically different from the rest of the peninsula? If a move would be for some reason necessary, Umayyad conquest of the Iberian Peninsula could be a plausible option. I have no opinion in the use of "Muslim" or "Umayyad". Super Ψ Dro 20:40, 16 March 2023 (UTC)
  • Comment. It's not about "we"; it's about the sources. And the most WP:COMMONNAME used by the sources is not "Foo conquest of Portugal and Spain" or anything like it. And no source uses "Umayyad conquest of anything"; it's Wikipedia fiction. And confusing fiction at that. Bermicourt (talk) 22:22, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

The term "Portugal" is not really relevant in this time period. It is not being excluded. "Spain" is a general geographical connotation at this time, and commonly found in RSs, the literal English translation of the Roman province of Hispania. Like the use of the terms "Britain", "Germany" or "Italy" for the Roman provinces of "Britannia", "Germania" and "Italia". Walrasiad (talk) 00:13, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

Sorry but this title is not acceptable. It is 100% obvious readers will believe this article is restricted to the modern country of Spain if we use this title, and readers wanting to go to a Portugal-specific article (believing such information would not be here) would not know where to go. We could even have an artificial split of this article by having someone create an article called "Muslim conquest of Portugal" even though both historical events are one and the same. It is all problems and zero benefits. I can't even understand why would users support a hard and inflexible interpretation of the sources to achieve an outcome like this. The article is about Portugal and Spain, so it cannot only include Spain in the title. Period.

Geographical names of the 8th century hardly matter here. We are discussing a title for a Wikipedia article in 2023, and we should employ names used in 2023 for the areas we are referring to. Also, "Spain" (or rather, Hispania) had a different connotation than now. It back then referred to the Roman province(s) covering the Iberian Peninsula or even areas of northern Africa and modern southern France. But it now only means the country. We cannot ignore this difference in intended meaning and employ a name over an area it does not refer to. Further, if Spain truly was an appropriate name for this epoch, the article Hispania would then be titled Spain (antiquity) or something similar, but it isn't. In the English language, Hispania is used for the past meaning and Spain is used for the modern meaning. Switching them up is nonsense. It is also for this reason that on Wikipedia, we do not use the names "Britain", "Germany" or "Italy" for the Roman provinces of "Britannia", "Germania" and "Italia".

As for the supposed common name, I'd like to see evidence showing that "Muslim conquest of Spain" is being used for the whole of the Iberian Peninsula and not only to Spain in the context of Spanish history, which is not the scope of this article. Super Ψ Dro 14:39, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

@Bermicourt: As the Google Scholar link that I have already provided attests, the statement above is simply not correct. For the sake of everyone's benefit, I will resupply it: here are your scholarly sources using the exact phrase "Umayyad conquest of the Iberian peninsula". For fairly obvious reasons, not least the matter "Spain" not existing at the time, and Portugal being actively excluded through the usage of the terminology of "Spain", scholarly usage tends to avoid such flagrant anachronisms. Iskandar323 (talk) 07:18, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

I would note that this would be less objectionable if one added in the modifier 'Visigothic', as in 'Visigothic Spain', because then at least the anachronism would be contextualized by what is a very common name indeed. Iskandar323 (talk) 07:29, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

Fairly obvious? The exact phrase "Muslim conquest of Spain" has more than tenfold more hits on Googlescholar. Walrasiad (talk) 09:28, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

Sure, and half of the hits on the first page are from the 1990s or earlier, with the leading hit being from 1976 and in the journal Jewish Social Studies - so what this actually tells us is that the preference for this imprecise language is both stronger in more dated sources, and, predictably, stronger in sources approaching the subject from rather specific interpretive framework, such as here, a very specific ethno-religious angle. In any case, I'm not denying that the name is popular, only that it falls short of WP:COMMONNAME and that other considerations apply. Iskandar323 (talk) 09:45, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

It is massively disproportionate. We are aiming for an article title, where recognizability is important. This is aimed at a general audience, not specialized scholars. Qualifications and precision, scholarly or otherwise, can be explained in the text. Walrasiad (talk) 09:58, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

And I am arguing that it does not take a specialist to know the term "Umayyad" - this dynasty ruled the caliphate for a hundred years and ruled Spain for 300 more - a longevity greater than that of many Kingdoms and Empires throughout history. It was not a mere blip on the historical landscape, and this vague hand-having at all things caliphal as "Muslim" is not only imprecise, it is a rather obvious form of entrenched systemic bias - one that has been noted in peer-reviewed scholarship: see this paper, page 678, last paragraph, where it refers to 'Muslim conquest' and 'Christian reconquest' as "contested phrases". One could cry POV. Iskandar323 (talk) 10:32, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

• Weak support. Walrasiad is correct that "Umayyad" is unnecessary and potentially more ambiguous than the proposal. It is less recognizable to a broad audience and less consistent with related articles. "Muslim" is fine, although my personal preference is for "Arab", as in the main English monograph on the subject by Roger Collins, The Arab Conquest of Spain. As for "Spain", this is the normal translation of Hispania in English sources for the early medieval period. It does not exclude Portugal, Gibraltar or Andorra. Another option, as Iskandar323 points out, is to use "Visigothic Spain" for clarity. I toyed with the idea of using "Visigothic Kingdom" at Talk:Umayyad invasion of Gaul#Titles. The latter terms have the advantage of being political rather than geographic and the conquest certainly did not stop at the Pyrenees, as neither did the Visigothic kingdom. My support is weak because the proposal is not my first choice, because I have grown comfortable over the years with this title and because I have no idea what the 600+ daily readers who come here take away from this title nor what they would gain or lose if it were changed to the proposal. But the current title looks "made by committee" and corresponds to nothing used in scholarship. Srnec (talk) 16:23, 18 March 2023 (UTC)
• Strong support. The current title is technically correct, but unrecognizable for most readers. I would not have thought to look under it; I would have looked under either "Muslim" or "Arab", and between the two it seems that "Muslim" is more accurate. I might expect "Hispania" in articles about Roman times, but even in Roman history we commonly use "Spain" interchangeably with "Hispania". It might not be inappropriate to use "Hispania" for variety, but it's not the name most people will think of by this point in time. As the nominator says, it doesn't appear that the present title is at all common in published sources, while the proposed title is. So while the current title isn't necessarily wrong, it's clearly not the best title, and the proposed title easily appears to be the best of the alternatives. P Aculeius (talk) 16:36, 18 March 2023 (UTC)
• Support there is no concise name that is perfect in every nuance, but the proposed name is more easily recognizable to a layman than the current one, and appears to correspond to COMMONNAME as well. As someone familiar with the history of medieval Spain, I would also consider the term 'Spain' to encompass the entire peninsula, and have seen it thus in multiple English-language works. Furthermore, the argument that the Arab conquests of the 7th and 8th century were not primarily driven by religious zeal, and that 'Muslim conquest' is therefore incorrect, is rather facetious: yes there were mundane motives as well, but without Islam and the impetus it gave, there never would have been any Arab conquests in the first place. We see even in our modern world how ideological imperatives can prevail against 'common sense' or narrow material interests. Constantine ✍ 19:03, 18 March 2023 (UTC)
• Support. Current name is unrecognisable. The proposed name may not be perfect but no better one has been suggested. Andrewa (talk) 11:13, 22 March 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose as proposed. While I agree that the proposed title isn't perfect, but the present title is better than the proposed one. I particularly agree with Festucalex's comments regarding WP:PRECISE. I'm not opposed to Glendoremus's alt proposal of "Moorish conquest of Iberia".--Estar8806 (talk) 02:59, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

"Moor" (moro) is used by Spaniards (maybe by the Portuguese too) as a slur against Muslims. Probably not a good idea. Super Ψ Dro 13:16, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

While I agree that it's not a good idea to use offensive language, it's not often used as a slur in English (from my quick research). First off, I'm not suggesting the suggesting the name "moro", I'm suggesting "Moor". They may mean the same thing in different languages, but are different words regardless. Second, it's not English wikipedia's job to avoid using language that is considered a slur in other languages. Third, it's used as the translation of Moors on Spanish wikipedia. Fourth, it's used elsewhere on English wikipedia (cf. Moorish architecture, etc.). And there are of course, the Moro people who self-identify with the name. Moor is an imprecise term even in English, but that doesn't make it offensive and even further doesn't make it unsuitable for Wikipedia. Estar8806 (talk) 21:49, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

Discussion

And on Google Scholar the results are:

• "umayyad conquest of the iberian peninsula" - 45 results
• "umayyad conquest of Hispania" - 67 results
• "Muslim conquest of Spain" - 564 results

So the proposed title is still way more common than the current one and one cannot cry "POV" because this is not anyone's opinion, but factually what WP:RELIABLESOURCES mostly use. What is POV is unsourced argument that the majority of reliable sources must be wrong. Bermicourt (talk) 21:05, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

"Muslim conquest of Spain" is a different concept from "Umayyad conquest of Hispania" or "Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula" (which by the way gets 220 results [10], it's on wide usage by reliable sources). Super Ψ Dro 21:39, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

There is much historical evidence that both the conquerors and conquered used the word "Spain" in their respective languages for the whole geographical area. It was a contraction of the old Roman word "Hispania" which had superseded by the Middle Ages. "Iberia" is a modern construct, but one that is still not as common as "Spain". Bermicourt (talk) 22:01, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

Iberia is a name that comes from Greek geographers, so it actually predates Hispania. Iskandar323 (talk) 07:10, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

I seriously doubt the word "Hispania" had evolved to something distinct enough by the 8th century, when Vulgar Latin had barely even started splitting into the several Romance languages. Please provide sources showing this phenomenon. By the way, the article Hispania covers historical events up until the 15th century. Super Ψ Dro 07:39, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

I concur that 'Spain' would be actively misleading in the title, since this article is not about events in the geography of just modern Spain, but modern Spain, modern Portugal and a portion of modern France. If the article was 'medieval archaeological finds in Spain' it would be fine, because archaeology is often to be divided up by the jurisdiction of the modern country, but that is not the case here, where the history of this conquest spans the borders of multiple modern countries, hence 'Hispania' is the correct, precise term. Iskandar323 (talk) 08:18, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

"Spain" does not only mean the modern state any more than "Germany" does. "Spain" is the historical name of the peninsular region and most commonly used name for it, both in history and by historians. Likewise historians frequently refer to "Germany" even though there was no German Empire until 1871 - they were just collections of states in the Holy Roman Empire. And Spain was just a collection of states too. That's why the vast majority of sources use "Spain" and so should we if we aspire to be a decent encyclopaedia. "Hispania" is the Roman province and hence totally anachronistic; the Muslims and Spanish at the time didn't call it Hispania. Take a look at the Muslim coins of the era - they had "SPAN" embossed on them! And if you want sources, try Ngram again:

• "Muslim Spain" - score of 53156
• "Muslim Hispania" - score of 27

So "Spain" is used nearly 2,000 times more often than "Hispania" in the sources. And "Umayyad Hispania" doesn't even register. I'm afraid all the counterarguments ignore the overwhelming evidence of scholarly sources. Bermicourt (talk) 08:47, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

"Spain" is the historical name of the peninsular region and most commonly used name for it, both in history and by historians. in English-language literature, that would be Hispania, not Spain. Likewise historians frequently refer to "Germany" even though there was no German Empire until 1871 - they were just collections of states in the Holy Roman Empire. And Spain was just a collection of states too. Germany is if anything, used for all those states and regions that ended up being part of the modern country of Germany (and maybe to some lands it "recently" lost). It is not applied to other countries of the area such as Austria even though it is culturally, ethically and historically interrelated to the rest of Germany, because historians understand it is nonsense to refer to a country with the name of another. But this is anyway WP:OTHERSTUFF, because "Spain" is not used to refer to Portugal, ever. Those Middle Ages names are only the Roman name "Hispania" evolving into the modern English "Spain". I am not sure why should we adapt a name starting in "Span" such as "Spania" to "Spain" instead of "Hispania", that's your preference.

I incite users here to quit paying attention to the "common name" argument because Bermicourt has repeatedly failed to attend my demands of evidence proving that "Spain" in the searches they have provided apply to the whole of the peninsula and not only to Spain, or that they are studies on Iberian-wide history rather than specifically focused on Spanish one. I searched "Muslim Spain" on Google Scholar, and already the third result registers this name only because the article is titled "Muslim Spain and Portugal", implying Spain does not mean Iberia there [11]. And I didn't even have to click on it. "Hispania" and "Spain" are two different things in Wikipedia, you cannot compare one with the other, because one is Spain + Portugal (plus a couple territories) and the second is only Spain. And again, alternatives employing Iberia/the Iberian Peninsula, as I've shown above, are popular in academia, so they're a more than valid candidate for titling this article, it does not have to be only about Hispania vs. Spain. Super Ψ Dro 10:46, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

Inciting editors not to follow Wikipedia's primary policy of WP:COMMONNAME is effectively arguing that the majority of scholars are wrong and that we should follow our own WP:POVs instead. I don't have to prove why scholars mostly use "Spain", it's enough to understand that they do. Of course, there will always be scholars with a minority view and I've been quite candid about that, but I'm not proposing we adopt a minority name. We already have that.Bermicourt (talk) 13:00, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

I am not inciting editors to reject WP:COMMONNAME, but to reject your claim that your proposed title is supported by the policy. I don't have to prove why scholars mostly use "Spain" you're the starter of a requested move, you are quite literally required to do so. Super Ψ Dro 13:15, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

I'm not even sure what the point is here. No one is arguing for "Muslim Hispania" as a phrase in any title. Muslim Spain has no bearing on this either, any more than Muslim Portugal does, since neither cover the entire geography at hand here. The Holy Roman Empire is the Holy Roman Empire, and Hispania, the Roman and then Visigothic domain that the Umayyads invaded and conquered is called just that. I'm equally not sure what point about the Muslims not calling it Hispania has to do with anything. They called is Al-Andalus, which is obviously a completely different name altogether and has no bearing on the title here, which refers to the name of the area being invaded. Iskandar323 (talk) 13:26, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

@Super Dromaeosaurus. Incorrect. I only have to prove that scholars mostly use "Spain", not why they do. And the stats speak for themselves. @Iskandar, you are clearly not aware that as well as implementing their policy of renaming captured territory, even the Muslims continued to use the word "Spain" or its Arabic equivalent as well. And "Spain" was used for the whole area, even Portugal (from the 12th C) was a "kingdom in Spain" like Castile, or Léon and the native peoples under Muslim rule were referred to as Spani. All of which is a red herring. The proposal is to move this to the most common title in English. I have no axe to grind here; if anyone can convince me that there is a more common one than that proposed, I'm willing to support that instead. Bermicourt (talk) 13:55, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

BTW editors may wish to be aware that there are new proposals to move the following articles to "Arab conquest of Foo/NewName": Muslim conquest of Persia and Muslim conquest of Egypt. Bermicourt (talk) 14:04, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

Wow. @Iskandar323, it seems rather sleazy to start those RMs before this one is even finished. And not even alerting discussants here or there that there are parallel discussions going on? Walrasiad (talk) 15:42, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

They are simple WP:COMMONNAME discussions, and anyone in the relevant Wikiprojects can see them. The only topic of discussion here is this page's name, and it has zero bearing on other pages. Iskandar323 (talk) 16:12, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

Of course it has bearing on other pages. Consistency was one of the arguments I brought up for these pages, and you promptly went at started RMs on them. Don't assume we're naive. This was very bad form. Walrasiad (talk) 16:56, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

I only have to prove that scholars mostly use "Spain" you still haven't done that. Please prove that "Spain" in most sources is used for the whole of Iberia including Portugal. Super Ψ Dro 14:31, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

It doesn't actually matter what the place was called under the Muslims; what matters was what it was called at the point at which it was invaded, when it was still known as "Hispania". The "Visigothic Kingdom of Toledo" would of course be even more precise as the target of conquest, but then we would be butting up against pretty serious concision issues. Iskandar323 (talk) 16:19, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

What matters is what most scholars call this event; the rest is interesting but irrelevant. Bermicourt (talk) 17:31, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

I've already weighed in on the title above, but since the matter still hasn't been settled, and I didn't address the issue in detail before, I'll state that I agree that the modern use of "Spain" by historians in English-language sources should be determinative in this case. "Spain" and "Hispania" are used interchangeably for the entire peninsula during Roman times; while the name "Portugal" derives from a Roman-era name for a particular region, it was not regarded as a region distinct and separate from the rest of Roman Spain. The use of "Hispania" is not technically incorrect for post-Roman times, but historians tend to use "Spain" instead. Both can be used for variety, as can "Iberia" or "the Iberian peninsula", but "Spain" is the most commonly used and most recognizable.

I see no evidence that "Spain" as used by historians excludes Portugal at any point prior to its establishment as a separate kingdom in the twelfth century, and it certainly does not during the period of Visigothic rule, which as our article indicates encompassed the entire peninsula for some three hundred years prior to the Muslim conquest. During this period, "Spain" unambiguously refers to the entire peninsula, not the borders of modern Spain. Objecting to it on the grounds that it excludes Portugal is anachronistic, and as pointless as objecting to the use of "Italy" to describe the peninsula that today includes the Vatican City and San Marino.

As for the use of "Muslim" versus "Arab" or "Umayyad", I do not see this as an example of modern identity politics, but simply a matter of following historical convention. Few readers will ever search for this topic under "Umayyad" as it is not a familiar term in non-specialist English-language histories. Even those who are aware of it will not normally search for it, as it is not widely used as a title for this subject. The fact that it is more precise than the alternatives is beside the point: we have "Spanish Inquisition", not "Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition". An article title should be the most recognizable alternative, where that can be established, unless there is a compelling reason for not using it; precision becomes relevant mainly if there are two or more comparably recognizable alternatives, which is not the case here.

There is nothing inherently offensive about describing the invaders as "Muslim", any more than it is to describe the Crusaders as "Christian". The conquest was motivated in large part, if not necessarily to the exclusion of all other goals, to expand the reach of Islam into Europe and enlarge the existing Muslim state, by conquering the territory and converting as many of its inhabitants as possible to Islam. There was no question of turning Spain into an Arab state or converting its inhabitants into Arabs! I do not dispute that for some people the description of a "Muslim" conquest may strike a nerve—but we do not avoid historical accuracy merely because some people are bigoted. "Muslim conquest" does nothing more than accurately describe a historical event from which we are long removed, and it uses the most widely-used and recognizable description of that event. P Aculeius (talk) 15:23, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

@P Aculeius: As far as I can see, there is not an obvious reason from the basic perspective of source prevalence to be favouring "Muslim" over "Arab", when, if anything, the latter carries the greater long-term weighting in sourcing. This is also borne out on Google Scholar, where "Arab conquest of Spain" bests "Muslim conquest of Spain" 700+ hits to 560+ hits. A big cause of this is the prolific volume of reviews for the very seminal The Arab Conquest of Spain: 710 - 797 by medievalist Roger Collins, which, I would note, accounts for a third of all its references on this page - a perhaps unsurprising performance given its subject-matter expertise/specialism. Iskandar323 (talk) 18:15, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

The number of references to a particular source is not very relevant for determining the best title for an article. Where "Muslim" and "Arab" are both applied with some frequency, it makes sense to delve into how accurately the terms describe the event. All of the invading forces were Muslims; only some were Arabs. Their goal was to bring Spain under the governance of a state defined by its adherence to Islam and its goal of spreading Islam throughout the world. The effect was to establish a distinctly Muslim state, or series of states, which were not defined by their connections to the Umayyads—already lost by the time the conquest reached its greatest extent—or to persons of Arab ethnicity. Since the motivations of the invaders and the effect of their conquest were primarily religious, and bore only a limited and temporary correspondence to ethnicity, "Muslim" makes more sense in the title. It also has the benefit of relating to the conquered territory long after the Umayyads and Arabia ceased to be associated with Muslim rule in Spain, which of course continued in various degrees until the late fifteenth century. P Aculeius (talk) 18:35, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

The number of references to a particular source is highly relevant in determining the weight of that source, much as frequency of citation and one's h-index is relevant in academia. Roger Collins is an established expert. Your other points here seem to revolve largely around what you think the article should be called based on your opinion, not an assessment of the sourcing. There are two things to consider here: policy and sources, and you bring neither to bear in the above paragraph. Iskandar323 (talk) 19:31, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

Please review WP:TITLE, particularly WP:COMMONNAME and WP:PRECISION. There is nothing in this policy about adopting whatever title the author of a particular work has used, even if that work is the most frequently cited by the article, or indeed the main work cited, and no matter how brilliant an expert the author is. My opinion and the reasons already given multiple times on this page are based on actual Wikipedia policy—if you choose to disregard them because they are my "opinion" then feel free—but you're not going to "win" this argument by BLUDGEONING everybody who disagrees with you here or on the other articles where you're making the same argument over and over. P Aculeius (talk) 22:39, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

You can of course ignore source quality, the prevailing sources used in the article and the academic pedigree of their authors, but don't kid yourself that you are helping the project or abiding by its core principles in doing so. WP:NPA is also policy. If you have issues with me, you should take it to my talk page, not poison talks. Iskandar323 (talk) 07:58, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

As P Aculeius correctly notes, those involved in this conquest were not only Arabs. Berbers played a huge role on it, and in fact they surpassed the Arabs. We can hardly talk about Arabs in the area of Maghreb in the 8th century. Berbers were for centuries a very relevant structure of the society of al-Andalus, they were their own class in the social hierarchy. This is what is taught in history class in Spain. Note that Tariq ibn Ziyad, who initiated the conquest of Iberia, was a Berber. To only refer to this as an "Arab conquest" would be a huge ignorance of history and would attribute an ethnic point of view to the conquest which it did not have. Super メ Dro 20:07, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

Yes, 'Arab', much like 'Muslim', pertains to the dominant characteristics of the invading polity. Of course, there is a more precise option: Umayyad, but this discussion exists precisely because there is a want to nix that. An Arab army is no more necessarily 'Arab' than an Egyptian army 'Egyptian' or a Byzantine army 'Byzantine'; it is a characterisation of the dominant ruling class of the power in question. Unless we have a gallup poll or pew survey from the 7th century handy, it is likewise extremely daft from an objective point of view to characterise an entire army, including one comprising locally enlisted Berber tribes, as 'Muslim'. Heaven knows what the religious practices were and state of faith was among the rank and file. My point was about the sources, which are what we follow here. Do you think the likes of Roger Collins are ignorant of the Berber component of the Umayyad forces? Or is it possible that topline descriptions of armies aren't required to contain granular details of their make-up? Iskandar323 (talk) 20:32, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

While I get your point, I am pretty sure the line between what was Arab and what was not was pretty clear in the 7th century. Further, I think calling a Byzantine army "Byzantine" would be the equivalent of titling this article with "Umayyad", while calling it "Greek" would be the equivalent of calling this one "Arab". "Byzantine" is an okay umbrella term for the groups of peoples composing the army of the Byzantine Empire as it was not only composed of Greeks and ethnicity was also not a relevant factor. Which I'd argue is the same here. The problem following this logic would then be which of the umbrella terms, "Umayyad" or "Muslim", would be the most appropriate, if accepted firstly as such. And I believe "Muslim" is indeed appropriate as these conquests were based on the spread of Islam by Muslims.

I also think Berbers were actually more numerous than Arabs. That's what Spaniards get taught. And apparently Collins himself affirms this, read the third paragraph here. I am also unsure about there being any evidence for there having been believers of local Berber faiths among the army that conquered Iberia. One could have then expected some presence of these in the peninsula which I seriously doubt has ever been recorded. Let's not forget the Umayyads governed a caliphate, ruled by the caliph, an Islamic leader who was supposed to be a successor of Muhammad, as I've understood it. Islam was the main, central and common factor here. It was definitively not Arab ethnicity, with Arabs anyway having been a minority in many of the lands they conquered, this also affecting their armies. Super Ψ Dro 22:15, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

If you look at page 8-9 of that Collins work (page 12-13 on google books), it elaborates that the invading force of 711 consisted of a dominant group of mainly mawali, or former slaves and their descendants affiliated with Arab tribes, accompanied a much larger body of Berber troops that was mainly used as a garrisoning force in the center and north of the peninsula after resistance had already been crushed. There are two key points here: 1) the Berbers, as a recently conquered and subjugated people, were never the core of the invading force or tip of the spear, but auxiliary forces (directed as necessary to mundane tasks such as garrisoning). 2) the Arab component of the forces was still considered 'dominant' despite being numerically outweighed by their Berber auxiliaries. Combined, these are the factors that contributes to it being called an 'Arab' conquest. That the Berbers might loom larger in Spanish history classes is not particularly surprising, since those troops actually garrisoning cities and maintaining the occupation (presumably with the usual occupational violence) would naturally loom larger in local histories relative to the forces present at the comparatively brief battles that actually decided the course of the invasion. Iskandar323 (talk) 07:10, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

What I still don't get is why use a title that partially covers the invading forces rather than using a title that completely covers it. Also, the claim that the Berbers were never the core of the invading force or tip of the spear is inaccurate, as the commander who initiated the invasion, Tariq, was a Berber. Out of the six listed commanders in the infobox, two were Berbers, and one might have been an Arab or a Berber. And two of those six Arab commanders were under the lead of Tariq. "Arab" is simply not an appropriate term here. Super Ψ Dro 13:16, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

Both "Muslim" and "Arab" in the proposed titles are political terms, not religious or ethnic. The first is shorthand for "of the Caliphate"; the second for "of the Arab empire" (the first and only). Srnec (talk) 13:41, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

You're the first here to introduce "Arab" in a political sense. Up to this point we've discussed Arabs and Berbers as separate demographic groups. If we're to also consider the political aspect of "Arab" and "Muslim" then what's the point of distinguishing them from "Umayyad"? So far users here have supported "Muslim" for this having been a campaign aimed at spreading Islam (as supporters of this have stated) and "Arab" for Arabs having been the dominant elite of the invasion (as supporters of this have stated). This is how I've understood it so far. Super Ψ Dro 15:16, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

I also meant Arab in a political sense, which is the sense in which Tariq's identity is a sidenote. That a Berber was in command does not detract from the fact that it was an Arab army at its core acting on behalf of an Arab empire. Likewise, that the commander of the Mongol forces at the Battle of Ain Jalut was Kitbuqa, a Naiman and Nestorian Christian, did not detract from it being a Mongol engagement. Iskandar323 (talk) 17:19, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

Note @Iskandar323 is at it again, starting more related RMs before this one is even finished. He's now opened RMs on Early Muslim conquests and Muslim conquest of Armenia, trying to get their titles changed from "Muslim" to "Arab". He has also has created a new page he titled Arab conquest of Mesopotamia. And once again, he has not notified editors here or on any other on-going discussions that he opened related RMs, forcing them to scramble across pages and repeat the same arguments again. Walrasiad (talk) 01:13, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

If you think this rises to the level of disruption or policy violation that requires some sort of intervention, perhaps you should consider taking this to the admin noticeboard. I'm not really that familiar with the process, as I try to avoid escalating conflicts even when they're as frustrating as this. But I'm happy to support you if you think it would help. Or if you don't think it rises to that level, can you suggest a more productive course of action? P Aculeius (talk) 03:09, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

How about you both stick to commenting on the content, not the contributor, per WP:NPA. Iskandar323 (talk) 07:44, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

I note that Arab conquest of Mesopotamia might be considered a WP:POVFORK of Muslim conquest of Persia, if it mainly duplicates the material already present at the latter title. But that could change if the scope of the article is narrowed, and substantial new content is added to it. Whether the title is ideal is a separate issue. We'll have to see whether the content becomes sufficiently distinct to justify a separate article as something other than a POVFORK, but it is the responsibility of the editor who created the new article to make it distinct. P Aculeius (talk) 03:36, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Abandoned user draft

Please would an interested editor assess the material added at User:Dramkis/sandbox (marked bold/italic), incorporate what is useful, blank that page as WP:COPYARTICLE, and leave a note here when done? – Fayenatic London 21:33, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

Requested move 28 March 2023

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: No Consensus - Numerically and in terms of arguments, there is no consensus to move in this discussion. I did consider a re-list, however the discussion has already run for nearly a month and there has been only one !vote in the last week. A further relist is therefore unlikely to change the outcome.

Those in favour of the move base their argument primarily on accuracy, particularly in that what is now Portugal was also conquered during the Arab/Muslim invasions. This was at least partly rebutted by those in opposition pointing to wider definitions of "Spain". Those in favour of the move also pointed to the surprising and contradictory references to places within now-Portugal in an article the title of which states that it relates to Spain, these were less firmly rebutted by the opposers. On the opposers side was the more concise nature of the present name, which is undeniable, and that the present name is anyway the common-name, which was less accepted (reference could have been made to the Google Scholar evidence cited in the previous recent RFC, but was not, though NGrams evidence was cited here it was disputed).

My non-binding suggestion to those wanting to move the article is to wait some months (preferably ~6 months or more) before attempting a further move discussion, and to investigate whether there is an identifiable WP:COMMONAME. (non-admin closure) FOARP (talk) 10:21, 24 April 2023 (UTC) FOARP (talk) 10:21, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

---

Muslim conquest of Spain → Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula – I believe the option of using "Iberian Peninsula" at the end of the title has not been sufficiently discussed. I believe this is the most appropriate title and my arguments are based on three points.

1. "Spain" fails WP:PRECISE and WP:CONCISE due to the exclusion of Portugal and other regions and does not follow the common practice in Wikipedia (see similar articles: List of the Pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula, Timeline of the Muslim presence in the Iberian Peninsula, Roman conquest of the Iberian Peninsula, Timeline of Germanic kingdoms in the Iberian Peninsula, Mercenaries of the ancient Iberian Peninsula).
2. "Spain" is not the name used for the peninsula at those times (it is anachronistic) and it does not matter if it was. Historical forms such as Spania would be closer to the concept defined by the modern English name of "Hispania", identical to the Latin original and for which we have an article, defining the former Roman province(s) actually covering the whole peninsula, vs. the modern country covered by the word "Spain" which does not treat the whole of the peninsula while also including regions outside of it.
3. "Spain" is not the WP:COMMONNAME for this event. Both the current and proposed being descriptive names, the common name argument has more nuances than if we were discussing proper names. Further, in the last RM, some users stuck to the notion that Spain is simply an appropriate way of naming the whole peninsula, which I do not believe should have gone assumed without discussion as it did. Many of the results that showed up were immediately interpreted as employing Spain for the whole of the peninsula, but there is no proof of this. If I search "Muslim conquest of Spain" in Google Scholar, there is a total of 565 results. I will discuss the very first academic paper there I have free access to. It is Jews, Visigoths, and the Muslim Conquest of Spain. Already on the first page we see One of the most persistent myths of modern historiography asserts that the Jewish communities of the Visigothic Kingdom collaborated with the Arab and Berber invaders of the Iberian Peninsula in the year 711. The author has already made clear he is distinguishing between "Spain" and "Iberian Peninsula" in this context. This paper is about Spain, not Iberia. Also on the first page we see He is currently working on his Ph.D. dissertation regarding the conquest and resettlement of Majorca in Barcelona, Spain. The geographical location of the scholar also can influence the title they choose to use. Being in Spain or at least being connected to it, this author published a work in Spanish history in a Spanish context, and not one on Iberian history in general.

There is zero evidence to believe all academic papers employing "Muslim conquest of Spain" are deliberately choosing to refer to the peninsula as Spain rather than Iberia. That is in fact a very wild assumption to make, but it is one users supporting the current title decided to adopt. This issue is far more complex and nuanced and the burden on proving that indeed authors are making use of Spain for the whole of the peninsula falls on those who supported the last move and will oppose this one, not on me or in supporters of this move. I will lastly state that forms using Iberia or Iberian Peninsula have 497 results in Google Scholar [12], actually pretty close to the 565 Spain has.

In conclusion. Many of the arguments for using "Spain" are flawed in many ways are require further consideration. That it is a common name is not a proven fact. Forms using Iberia are also very common and are concise and precise, and not anachronistic. This is why I believe they are a better title. And just in case, to avoid an Iberian Peninsula vs. Iberia debate, the article on the peninsula is called Iberian Peninsula and as I understood it, the move to "Umayyad conquest of Hispania" was carried out in the first place in 2007 because editors thought using "Iberia" could cause problems due to Georgia, also attacked by Muslim invading forces, was historically called Iberia as well [13]. Super Ψ Dro 11:43, 28 March 2023 (UTC) — Relisting. BD2412 T 00:49, 8 April 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose. Besides the fact that we just did this, the fact remains that prior to the establishment of the Kingdom of Portugal, "Spain" as used by historians unambiguously refers to the entire peninsula—both in Roman times and at all points thereafter. Since "Spain" and "Hispania" are really two forms of the same name, it is not anachronistic to use "Spain" in this manner, and indeed it has long been widespread practice to use the terms interchangeably when referring to the region from antiquity to the middle ages. Insisting on distinguishing Portugal, which was not a separate and distinct political entity until the thirteenth century, when speaking of Visigothic Spain (which included all of Portugal at the time of the Muslim conquest) is the anachronism here. I do not claim that "Iberia" is incorrect; it is simply not as recognizable as "Spain", and there is no advantage to using it, as there is no distinction between "Spain" and "Iberia" during the time period with which this article is concerned. And if we follow WP:CONCISE, then "Spain" is certainly more concise than "the Iberian peninsula". P Aculeius (talk) 17:50, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

"Spain" as used by historians unambiguously refers to the entire peninsula, and indeed it has long been widespread practice to use the terms interchangeably when referring to the region from antiquity to the middle ages I have yet to see proof of any of this. I again state I do not understand why has this been interpreted as an assumed fact when it still lacks evidence. Many of the academic articles titled with Spain are Spain-focused, because they're written by Spaniards, Spanish specialists or in some other Spanish context. The use of "Spain" does not demonstrate a deliberate decision by the authors of rejecting "Iberia/Iberian Peninsula" for referring to the peninsula. And "Spain" is absolutely not more recognizable than "Iberian Peninsula". One is used for a country and one is used for the peninsula including it and another. If we talk about the peninsula, "Iberian Peninsula" is the name, period. Otherwise, we would see other articles adopt this practice; we instead see the opposite, see for example Roman conquest of the Iberian Peninsula or Timeline of the Muslim presence in the Iberian Peninsula.

Besides the fact that we just did this doesn't matter, the user who closed the last RM recommended further discussion on the Iberian option. Super Ψ Dro 21:16, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

I'm not about to go trying to hunt down an authority for something so universally done that nobody thinks to mention it—"Roman Spain" means all of the Iberian peninsula, except for the period in which Rome controlled only part of it; "Visigothic Spain" means whatever portion the Visigoths controlled, which after the defeat of the Suebi was all of it until the Muslim conquest. This has nothing to do with Spanish authors giving short shrift to the Portuguese; this is about a standard practice in English-language scholarship. At least until the point in history when there was an independent state of Portugal, "Spain" in a historical context always means the entire peninsula unless the author specifically states otherwise.

"Muslim conquest of the Iberian peninsula" needlessly complicates the title and makes it less concise; most readers will not think to look under that title before "Spain". And it is not irrelevant that we just argued about this exact same issue for a couple of weeks. That an uninvolved closer suggested it might be worth further discussion doesn't mean that the people who just spent all that time arguing about the best title for this article want to do it all again, going around and around in circles with people who simply are not going to be convinced by anything that they say. That already seems to be happening in this new discussion, and currently it looks as though some of the people who dealt with the previous move proposal are avoiding this one, presumably because they're tired of trying to explain their opinion over and over, only to be contradicted or ignored. P Aculeius (talk) 02:40, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

Such a practice has not been shown to be real. Authors in the recent centuries can easily simply be using names of modern countries currently associated to the regions they are discussing in their papers treating other historical epochs. That is why we have 114 results for "Mongol conquest of Russia" [14] even though no such thing as Russia existed back then. To assume all authors using "Muslim conquest of Spain" are deliberately choosing this option against referring to the Iberian Peninsula is an unfounded so far assumption. "Muslim conquest of the Iberian peninsula" needlessly complicates the title and makes it less concise We are just adding an extra of two words. It isn't that much of a deal. There also are no concision problems. "Iberian Peninsula" very clearly means the region the article covers.

That an uninvolved closer suggested it might be worth further discussion doesn't mean that the people who just spent all that time arguing about the best title for this article want to do it all again that's not really my problem. Consensus determined another discussion is valid. You can dispute the resolution given by the (indeed uninvolved, as policy requires) user if you wish though. Super Ψ Dro 13:24, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

Oppose - Particularly considering another RM was just closed today resulting in the same title. While I disagree about the move to the present title, the exclusion of Portugal in the title isn't a major issue as "Spain" often referred to the whole peninsula in the Middle Ages, such as in the little Imperator totius Hispaniae (Emperor of All Spain). The clear division between Spain and Portugal is a development of the last several centuries. Estar8806 (talk) 20:29, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

As I state above, that we just had a RM is irrelevant. As a result of such a division between Spain and Portugal having indeed developed as you state, in the 21st century it is required to make use of a name that covers both concepts. Further, the medieval title is simply employing Hispania, not "Spain". It appears today such a title is mostly translated to "Emperor of All Spain" rather than "Emperor of All Hispania" in English-language academia, which only shows current and not historical usage. But that is an individual case, it is not equivalent to this historical event. That "Spain" is more common in the context of that title does not prove "Spain" is more common for referring to the Islamic conquest. That too requires individual analysis. Please, show evidence that "Spain" is more common for referring to the Islamic conquest of the Iberian Peninsula. I remind that both variants have a very close number of uses in academic journals, and while "Spain" is ambiguously used, meaning that only some of the results will refer exclusively to the peninsula, the intention when using "Iberia/Iberian Peninsula" is very clear. Super Ψ Dro 21:16, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

Agree The anachronism matter is not the issue. Clarity of meaning is more important, and 'Spain can be ambiguous, whether or not it is technically correct or is the term used by sources. Using 'Iberian Peninsula' is unambiguous and also correct in every respect and should therefore be used. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 22:33, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose. In this context, "Spain" is common and clear. The territory of what later became Portugal is not being excluded. Any doubt is rapidly dissipated in the lede. Walrasiad (talk) 06:49, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

But is it superior to "Iberia/Iberian Peninsula" in usage and clarity? Super Ψ Dro 07:26, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

Yes. e.g. "Muslim Spain" is a very common term, you'll find used in practically all works that touch on this topic. "Muslim Iberia" is very rare, and "Muslim Iberian peninsula" and "Muslim Portugal" practically non-existent. ngram Walrasiad (talk) 12:41, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

We're not discussing the name of the peninsula under Muslim rule, which is called not Muslim Spain not Muslim Iberia but al-Andalus. "Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula/Iberia" has almost as many results in Google Scholar as "Muslim conquest of Spain" while at the same time unambiguously referring to the peninsula in all cases without any problems of precision unlike the current form does. Super Ψ Dro 13:24, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, I struggled with this line of reasoning in the last RM. You conquer what was there before - referring to a territory being conquered by what it will come to be known later is a whole new level of anachronism. Iskandar323 (talk) 13:36, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

The term commonly used in RSs is "Muslim Spain", not al-Andalus. But that's for another day. The prevalence of "Muslim Spain", suggests the Muslims conquered "Spain" at some point. And that is what makes this title helpful to readers. If you want to be pedantic, then they certainly did not conquer the "Iberian peninsula" (Cantabria was never conquered), and southern France must be included in the title (as Narbonensis/Septimania was also conquered in this campaign). So your proposal is not only less familiar, it is also factually erroneous. Walrasiad (talk) 14:54, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

Nope, it is al-Andalus. It is more common both in Ngrams and Scholar by a wide margin. The prevalence of "Muslim Spain", suggests [...] I am again going to remind you the article we're discussing is Muslim conquest of Spain, not al-Andalus. Make arguments based on the topic of this article, not of another. then they certainly did not conquer the "Iberian peninsula" (Cantabria was never conquered) but that does not apply to "Spain" for some reason? Very easily I can also tell you Septimania has never been defined as "Spain". Does that make the title you defend factually erroneous too? Super Ψ Dro 15:45, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

Nope, it's "Muslim Spain". I research & read in this area all the time, and that's the common term used. Hands down. Even if "al-Andalus" is mentioned, it is not repeated again in rest of the text to refer to the place, which will almost always be referred to as "Spain" or "Muslim Spain". As to Cantabria & Septimania: you have been insisting on imposing a less familiar title because you believe it is "more accurate" than plain Spain. But "Spain" has always been used by historians roughly, it is not meant to be precise. "Iberian peninsula" is meant to be geographically precise, but it is also incorrect. When choosing between a roughly correct term ("Spain") and a precisely wrong term ("Iberian peninsula"), I'll go with the former. Especially when it is used more commonly in this context, and is more recognizable to readers. Walrasiad (talk) 18:07, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose for now. I suppose it's about time to use that Google counting gadget to comprehend the prevelance of usage of each term and publish the results here. Swift and simple. Nashville whiz (talk) 13:35, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

If you mean Google Ngrams, it does not allow searches of more than five words. "Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula" has six words and thus cannot be searched, so it is not useful in this case. Super Ψ Dro 15:45, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

You could just search for "conquest of the Iberian Peninsula" and then compare it to the combined totals for "Arab conquest of Spain" and "Muslim conquest of Spain". Red Slash 17:14, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

• Support Furthermore, Islamic (as in Islamic conquest of the Iberian Peninsula, which is attested in plenty of secondary sources) may be even preferable to Muslim as it underpins the political side. Common or not, current (not to confuse with long-standing, as it has been a recent change) title is 1) ambiguous (as in 'not precise', thus murking the scope of the article and shunning Portugal for most readers) and 2) panders to Spanish essentialism. An elaborate scholar reasoning about why it is unconvenient to use Spain can be found here.--Asqueladd (talk) 16:06, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
• As closer of the last RM, I'm strongly neutral, but this move request is definitely valid. "We just did this" but there wasn't a strong, well-debated consensus about how exactly to refer to the conquered entities. Most of the discussion revolved around the first word of this title, not the last word. I support discussion and will be interested to see what comes out of it. Red Slash 17:14, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

  I didn't say it was invalid, I said it was a reason why I didn't want to get into the same debate a second time—most of the arguments about Spain/Iberia/Hispania are the same ones already expressed in the previous debate, and none of them are going to change the minds of the people who've already expressed their opinions after reading the same arguments restated multiple times. However, here is the ngram for "Muslim conquest of Spain", "...Iberia", and "...the Iberian" (I tried entering "Hispania" as an alternative, but for whatever reason it was not included in the results). The search was case-insensitive. Although the latter alternatives have increased in popularity over the last few decades, so has "Spain", which accounts for about the same number as both of the others combined. P Aculeius (talk) 18:02, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

  And I just found why it didn't include "...Hispania" when I deleted the two Iberian options, and tried to compare just "Spain" against "Hispania": "Ngrams not found: Muslim conquest of Hispania". Which is not to say that the phrase has never appeared in an English-language publication; just that it is too rare to show up in Google's corpus of English-language books published between 1800 and 2019. P Aculeius (talk) 18:06, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

I think we should count "Iberia" and "the Iberian" together, as we're discussing whether we should use the name of the peninsula or of the modern country. These are the results [15]. "Iberia" forms are on the rise and get close to the Spain variant which has been decreasing on the last years. We see a trend of authors switching more and more to the Iberian version. Though this is, once again, assuming all uses of Spain refer to the whole peninsula rather than the modern country, which is not necessarily the case. Super Ψ Dro 19:56, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

I just said that "Spain" accounts for as much use as the others put together—that alone is a strong argument for keeping it. And there is not a sustained downward trend shown in the ngram; just the opposite. You're cherry-picking facts to present a misleading picture of the evidence—placing the desired result before the facts and ignoring everything that stands in the way. That includes historical usage, which is relevant, since the majority of scholarly literature on the subject is not from the last ten or fifteen years, and sources much older than that remain perfectly valid. And this is why I did not want to restart the same argument with the same people again as soon as the last one finished. And at this point it looks like any outcome other than a move will be followed by yet another request to move the article for yet another slightly different formulation of the same reason... P Aculeius (talk) 20:13, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

There has been a grand total of two requested moves. Quit the lamenting. Also, recent trends in contrast to historical trends are worth taking into consideration. So as to give you an example, Kiev was moved to Kyiv because Kyiv had become more common in recent years [16]. Analysing the total of results is not always required. By the way, this trend is reflected not only on Ngrams but in Google Scholar too. When searching only academic articles since 2019, "Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula" OR "Muslim conquest of Iberia" gives 163 results while "Muslim conquest of Spain" gives 120. "Muslim conquest of Spain", in this maximalist definition, stopped being more common in 2002 (links: Spain 2001, Iberia 2001 vs. Spain 2002, Iberia 2002. Iberia has been more common than Spain for +20 years. To this we add the ambiguity and precision problems given by using "Spain". Super Ψ Dro 21:12, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

Filtering the results by excluding those that don't support your argument doesn't make the argument any stronger. And don't tell me how to feel about telling you my position over and over again and explaining the reasons clearly, and constantly being told that I'm wrong. This is BLUDGEONING, where not only do you disagree with other people, but you have to reply to everything that anyone says telling them why it's wrong. Maybe it's a fine line between picking apart bad arguments and bludgeoning, but you don't have to have the last word on everything, and if people stop replying to every one of your replies out of sheer exhaustion, that doesn't mean that they have no answer for you, and that you have "won". You think all the evidence is on your side, other people see it differently. People have a right to their opinions based on the evidence as they see it, and after a while it's pointless to keep arguing that their opinions are wrong. At a certain point it would be nice to think that the arguing would come to an end, as it seemed to have done two days ago, but here we are again, and it's going the same way. P Aculeius (talk) 01:18, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

Repeatedly bandying around the term bludgeoning is itself bludgeoning. A poor filler for comments with little else meaningful to say. Here's a more pertinent essay to chew on: WP:WALLOFTEXT Iskandar323 (talk) 06:37, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

"No, you!" is a great argument. But the point remains: each time someone gives a reason why they think the article title should remain at "Spain" (or "Muslim", or "Persia"), here or in the related discussions that were closed yesterday, you or Super Dromaeosaurus have to reply, stating why that editor's reasons are wrong and should be disregarded. I understand the impulse, and if the reasons given really are bogus then there's at least some justification—but at a certain point you just have to accept that you will not convince people that your interpretation of the evidence is better than theirs, especially if they have already seen your explanation and decided against it. And you do not "win" the argument by replying to every response until other editors stop replying to you, thereby allowing you to claim that your last-posted versions of the same argument have been accepted (or not refuted). P Aculeius (talk) 12:09, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

I haven't actually really voted in this discussion. But regarding the above. Pot. Kettle. Black. One can't really tell others not to pontificate while simultaneously pontificating oneself. Iskandar323 (talk) 16:50, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

Off-topic discussion

Hate to break it to y'all, but Arab conquest of Spain still kicks collective butt. Iskandar323 (talk) 20:43, 29 March 2023 (UTC) That's hilarious. Since the bulk of the conquest was undertaken by Berbers, not Arabs. Walrasiad (talk) 20:51, 29 March 2023 (UTC) I'm talking about sources. The alternative – dubious, vaguely nationalist POV-y OR – has no place here. It was an Arab empire, hence Arab conquest ... as it says in reliable, independent, secondary sources, which is, erm ... what the content policy here is based on. A great deal of this was covered in the previous discussion. Please feel very welcome to go plot "Berber conquest of Spain" on Ngrams and watch bugger all pop up ... if only to spare us further iterations of this vapid discourse. Iskandar323 (talk) 21:18, 29 March 2023 (UTC) "Arab empire"? Who was the "Emperor"? The "King of the Arabs"? LOL. Walrasiad (talk) 21:27, 29 March 2023 (UTC) This discussion is already excessively long. We don't need to discuss already rejected proposals here. If there is a comment after this one related to this I will delete the whole thread. Super Ψ Dro 21:37, 29 March 2023 (UTC) Hey hey hey, easy there on what proposals you go calling already rejected ... the last RM barely touched on this. But indeed, there's always tomorrow. Iskandar323 (talk) 21:50, 29 March 2023 (UTC) "King of the Arabs" is exactly what early Syriac sources call Muhammad and his successors. See, e.g., Jacob of Edessa and the Zuqnin Chronicle in Andrew Palmer, ed., The Seventh Century in the West Syrian Chronicles (Liverpool University Press, 1993). Identifying the early Muslim state as an Arab one goes back to Wellhausen and is well established in scholarship. Srnec (talk) 00:08, 30 March 2023 (UTC) I know. That's precisely why I brought up the term. You'll find "King of the Arabs" in Byzantine records then and down the ages. They did not understand the novel and subtle constitution of the Muslim state. To outsiders, the "Commander of the Faithful" made no sense, he must be just another barbarian king, and the "Muslims" just the same old Arabs - overexcited desert bandits on a rampage, like the Lakhmids and other Arabs before them. But the Muslims saw it differently. They didn't see themselves as an ethnicity, but a religious commonwealth, united and ruled by sacred law, not kings. They identified themselves as "Muslims", not Arabs, that was their identity, emphatically superseding clan, tribe, ethnicity and even race. It was a novel form of state organization that was hard for outsiders to comprehend then. And some struggle with it even now. But this is separate discussion. Maybe this should be separated off from the RM above. Walrasiad (talk) 03:18, 30 March 2023 (UTC) Not sure quite what you're saying here. "The Muslims saw it differently" ... ok? And the rest of the world saw it differently again. Perceptions are not the issue here. The Arab conquests were the expansion of a polity like any other - by the time of the Umayyads, like any other monarchic empire - one specifically founded by the highly reticent Mu'awiya I, who hopped on the Islamic bandwagon as late as he possibly could, and, upon gaining power, turned nepotistic and dynastic at pace. Iskandar323 (talk) 06:48, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

• Support. It's only fair, considering the name that used to refer to the entire Iberian Peninsula was appropriated by the modern country of Spain. Wareno (talk) 09:30, 31 March 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose. My opposition is based not only on the satisfactory current title for reasons already stated above but because I think it is more likely to be used in searches. The Iberian Peninsula is mentioned up front in the article and a few words of clarification could be added, even in a footnote, if thought necessary. Regardless of which option is used, the other one should be a redirect, which the suggested Iberian Peninsula alternative currently is not. Donner60 (talk) 05:26, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

  Created redirects for both "Peninsula" and "peninsula" (our article on the p. is capitalized, but an ngram suggests that the uncapitalized form is also common). If this article is moved, it can be moved over one of the redirects. "Muslim conquest of Iberia" already exists. P Aculeius (talk) 11:49, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

  Also simplified the lead sentence, and added a note as suggested, explaining the use of "Spain" as it relates to "Hispania" and "Iberian Peninsula". Currently the article combines references and notes; the latter could be split off using a footnote template, such as {{efn-lr|note text goes here.}}. I usually use the lowercase roman numeral style to distinguish notes from reference numbers, but letters would do just as well. P Aculeius (talk) 12:05, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

  I've tweaked this slightly, since there are exactly two serious alt names of the 'of Spain' variety, and bolding fragments of alt names, rather than complete alt names, is not, AFAIK, guideline supported. Iskandar323 (talk) 12:48, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

  Pretty sure it's fine, and it reads more clearly (to me), but there's no need to go to war over it; I'll abide by your changes. I usually place notes by the word or phrase requiring explanation, and try to avoid placing them at the end of sentences, where they can be confused with citations; but since there's no separate note formatting in this article, and there are no citations at the end of the sentence, it isn't really a problem. P Aculeius (talk) 13:28, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose, per WP:COMMONNAME, Donner60's point and because we can't keep having RFCs on this - we're done here. Gog the Mild (talk) 22:16, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

The current title is not the common name. Super Ψ Dro 08:23, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

Not by any stretch of the imagination. No term here has a significant majority in sources. Iskandar323 (talk) 08:42, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

• Support Definite anti-Portuguese bias. The opening sentence of this article refers to it as the conquest of the Iberian peninsula, not Spain. Looking at some other relevant articles, Visigothic Spain redirects to "Visigothic Kingdom", and Muslim Spain redirects to "Al-Andalus". The map in the former article shows that this kingdom covered a large part of southern France at one time, and only conquered northern Portugal relatively late. Hispania points out that this is the origin of the name of Hispaniola as well as Spain. It is not clear then that Spain is treated as equivalent to, or even an alternative name for, the entire Iberian peninsula during this period. PatGallacher (talk) 23:40, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

  Are you suggesting that the mention of the "Muslim conquest of Spain" or "Muslim Spain" in reliable sources is biased against Portugal? SimoooIX (talk) 00:21, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

  • • Not necessarily, it is possible that some of them really are referring to Spain. PatGallacher (talk) 11:38, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
• Support as per nom. Change of heart here. Dromaeosaurus's latest arguments and stats had their final say on me and the fact that modern academic literature tend to use the "Iberian peninsula" more often now speaks for itself, WP:AGEMATTERS. Nashville whiz (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 06:04, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

  Except that the ngram clearly showed no downward trend in the use of "Spain" compared with "Iberia". The statistics show that "Spain" remains the most common term for the Iberian peninsula as a whole prior to the establishment of the Kingdom of Portugal in the twelfth century—four hundred years after the Muslim conquest. And it's used for the whole history of the region, not just the period of Visigothic rule; it's used when referring to Roman and pre-Roman times as well, alongside "Hispania". The claim of anti-Portuguese bias is not only absurd—at least when referring to English-language sources that have no particular interest in minimizing Portuguese history—but wildly anachronistic. P Aculeius (talk) 13:32, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

Except that the ngram clearly showed no downward trend in the use of "Spain" compared with "Iberia". it did clearly show that "Spain" in the WP:OR wide definition decreased to a level it has not recovered and that Iberia/Iberian Peninsula is increasing. The statistics show that "Spain" remains the most common term for the Iberian peninsula as a whole Iberia/Iberian Peninsula has been more common for 20 years in Google Scholar. And, the problem with many sources is they are written by Spanish authors or in Spanish publications, they understandably give more focus to Spain without implying the rejection of the term Iberia/Iberian Peninsula. But this is something you simply do not want to even consider, no matter what. All Spain results, 100% of them, must surely mean the peninsula. Super Ψ Dro 07:44, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

You are either not looking at this ngram or you are inventing an interpretation out of thin air. This analysis considers English-language sources, not Spanish authors in Spanish publications. The bias you insist is the source of "Spain" meaning the whole Iberian peninsula before there was a country called "Portugal" is largely if not entirely filtered out at the very beginning. The ngram shows no significant downward trend in the formulation currently used by this article; its prevalence has increased along with occurrences of the alternatives over the last several decades. There is zero evidence that historians writing in English have used "Spain" in order to denigrate or minimize the importance of Portugal, which did not exist as a separate state, and would not for another four centuries; and there is no plausible reason why they would wish to do so.

There is also no justification for limiting our inquiry to sources published in the last twenty years: that is a direct appeal to recentism, and fits neatly into the narrative that people are becoming less prejudiced against the Portuguese; but there is no evidence or explanation for such prejudice in English language sources, and no discernable trend to support this analysis. It is perfectly reasonable to consider what historians have been writing in English over the course of several decades, as well as what they are writing today; and little written since the subject first becomes discernable in the ngram around 1950 is so outdated with regard to the events of the eighth century that what it calls the conquest needs to be excluded from consideration.

No matter how often you keep dragging it up or how loudly you proclaim it, there is no basis whatever for claiming that historians writing in English are trying to hold down Portugal or erase its people from history. It is as much a red herring as the completely unsupported assertion of "original research" that you mentioned without the slightest basis above. I can only assume that it is there merely to alarm and intimidate. If it were somehow "original research" to inquire as to what the event is generally called in English, then there would be no point to this discussion, and the move request could be dismissed without further discussion. Your use of Google Scholar, arbitrarily filtered to exclude all other results, and everything published before 2000, would be no less original research; but carefully manipulated to show what you want it to show, which makes it far less useful for determining the best title for the article.

All I see here is repeated attempts to dismiss what you don't like, claim trends that don't exist in the statistics, and intimidate editors with bogus claims of original research and nonsensical arguments about anti-Portuguese bias lurking behind everything. Perhaps it is time to move on; there are other windmills to tilt at. P Aculeius (talk) 13:03, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

You then accuse others of bludgeoning or of wall of texts or whatever. What a strange behavior. I have never implied there is a deliberate anti-Portuguese bias in English-language academia. Also, as I already stated, it makes sense that Iberian forms would be counted together, you ignored this for whatever reason. With that 20 years thing I meant to state Iberia forms are currently more common in academic journals as shown in Google Scholar which is something often taken into consideration as in the Kyiv RM. All of this I have already explained, multiple times. This whole RM is just me repeating the same stuff to a couple of editors, you included.

I will ignore your accusations of intimidation and manipulation here but I am not going to let them pass a next time. I am going to refrain from answering to your comments because it is a waste of time and I recommend you to do the same with me. It will save others from useless paragraphs of text. Super Ψ Dro 15:06, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose. I am unsatisfied with current title and all the options in these RMs, but we should not move an article on the faulty logic that says we cannot use "Spain" the way historians use it. Srnec (talk) 13:50, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

Anachronism is not the only rationale behind this RM. Super Ψ Dro 07:44, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

• Support for now. One way out of this dilemma, and perhaps one that might satisfy both sides, would be to call the article "Muslim conquest of Hispania, since that is what the Iberian peninsula was called when the Visigoths subdued the Hispano-Roman population, and what it was called under their dominion. I agree with what Lawrence J. McCrank says:

"Islam in Ispaniya, that is al-Andalus, had to be integrated somehow into Spanish history, and if peninsular history were to be whole, that had to include Portugal. Yet 'Islamic Spain' seems a terrible anachronism, misleading for the incorrect assertions that the entire peninsula went Islamic, that peninsular political unity was ordained, and that all peninsular Muslims considered themselves Spaniards. As mentioned, the organ for such a synthesis was the grand Historia de España directed by Ramón Menéndez Pidal. This was almost totally a central nationalist undertaking, giving more attention to the Luso-Hispanic west than to the northeast, Catalunya; the old state-building themes were transferred to the Caliphate as the political history of Muslim Spain, as it were thought of then, were reassembled; and the glories of Muslim Hispania, not al-Andalus, were claimed for Spain herself as a cultural legacy to be selectively cherished.

But Islam was a thing of the past for the Spanish. There was, in Rouseau's Romantization of the noble savage, an idealized Islam in Spain, as if more benign than that encountered by crusaders in the Holy Land even though the very history recounted belied the treatment which relied most on the court of Alfonso X 'el Sabio' for its idealist rapprochement. This amounted to a rapprochement of sorts, coming to grips with an interrupted history. Spanish historiography in this integrative process was very Augustinian, in appropriating Islamic history in Spain from Islam in general, and making it Spanish, as though Islam were an unjust possessor of its own history. This also dissected Islam as a religio-cultural whole because its political history was so fractured, just as Europe, into nation-states. Al-Andalus was treated less as an entity unto itself or a continuous extension from the Near East across Africa, but as an aberration in Europe. It was thereby separated from the Near East and North Africa in historical maps, thematic treatments, reference works, and therefore, in general perception. Islamic Spain was thereby repatriated; and al-Andalus was made into something it was not." Carlstak (talk) 15:50, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

• Support. Portugal is not part of Spain. The current title is too confusing for readers and a violation of WP:ASTONISH. It has been shown that reliable sources use the proposed title. It hasn't been shown that most sources that use the term "Muslim conquest of Spain" are referring to Portugal too. Vpab15 (talk) 16:16, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Section The Urban-Huerta Landscape: The Economic Prosperity of Al-Andalus

This section, in addition to being better suited for the page Al-Andalus, contains what I perceive as opinionated and exaggerated views (for instance, ... the Reconquest of Spain, ... left Spain internally barren of resources), and furthermore it's pretty disconnected internally. I think that the section should be, if not entirely deleted, at least drastically trimmed. Jotamar (talk) 13:05, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

I agree. It isn't a good fit in the current article and definitely lacks a NPOV. I was unable to verify against some of the cited references; it would have been easier if page numbers were provided but neither Catlos nor Fromherz seem to back up what's been written. Should be deleted. Glendoremus (talk) 03:10, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

When I opened this discussion, I wasn't even aware about the refs in the section not backing the claims. With no further comments in one month, I'm going ahead and deleting the section. --Jotamar (talk) 23:12, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

Copyright violation, 13 May 2023

Earlier today, an editor made three edits to this article, the main one adding a new section entitled "Devastation of Hispania", and consisting of three largely unaltered paragraphs from The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise, pages 39 and 40 (a PDF of the book is linked in the copyvio notice currently at the top of the article; the pages are not numbered in the PDF, but I located the text by checking linked index entries for "Alfonso X"; the second one apparently is page 38).

I reverted these edits before I was aware of the copyright violation, for two reasons: 1) the first edit appeared to change a statement about one event into an assertion that the same thing happened repeatedly, although it was cited to a source that presumably described a specific event; i.e. the source did not describe what the edit changed the text to read.

2) the new section seemed unnecessarily rhetorical, and read as a list of grievances against the invaders, using quotations from period sources, and inflammatory phrases such as "young women as sexual slaves" (this exact wording twice in three sentences). There was no qualification or discussion of misdeeds on the part of Christians, so it seemed like a very one-sided discussion to tack on near the end of the article. The section also contained curly quotes and scare quotes, and did not read like encyclopedic text—one reason I didn't recognize it as a possible copyright violation, assuming that a scholarly source would write better than that.

The copyvio notice was placed a couple of hours after I reverted the edits. I note that the first edit listed for redaction is not part of a copyright violation: another editor corrected a typo (atttack → attack), nor is the last (my reversion). Not being an expert in remedying copyright violations, I looked up both Wikipedia:Revision deletion and Wikipedia:Copyright problems. My reading is that the revisions only need to be deleted if they cannot be cured by reverting the content to an earlier revision. While revision deletion could still be performed, I cannot see anything to suggest that this is the preferred course of action; the page about that procedure seems to indicate otherwise.

However, I thought I would report what I found while investigating the alleged copyright violation—it certainly was one—and explain why I had already deleted the content in question. I leave it up to the experts to decide whether to delete the appropriate revisions, noting that as a non-admin I couldn't do it myself anyway. P Aculeius (talk) 15:04, 13 May 2023 (UTC)

but most of it was quotes? it hought quotes were ok? H20346 (talk) 12:37, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

I have spanish and protugese friends and they told me the Invaders devasted the land. It is often said thatthe muslims were wlecomed a liberators to spainand they brought flowers and hugs but that seems like a myth that needs to be addressed. why would the misdeeds of christians be told? the muslims were the foreign invaders attacking them? H20346 (talk) 12:40, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

You are quoting from a book that has received poor reviews from scholars for it accuracy, or "the myth is a myth" in the words of one, so it seems inadvisable as an introduction to the topic. There are much better works out there. Iskandar323 (talk) 14:36, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

Generally quotations are fine, but you'd need to cite them as quotations and attribute them to the source in question. Here you simply copied the text of several paragraphs with almost no changes, and didn't attribute it to any source. To anyone who read the article, it would appear to be your own work, rather than quoted from a book. You could paraphrase the text by rewriting it in your own words, but you'd still need to attribute it to a source.

Also, the book you borrowed the text from doesn't appear to represent mainstream scholarship on the subject, but a revisionist view of events. It's very unbalanced, and much of the language is inflammatory. That means that it may not comport with Wikipedia policy, which requires articles to be written from a neutral point of view. That doesn't mean that articles have to present events as if nothing bad happened or assume that both sides were equally at fault, but it does mean that you have to take other perspectives into account—which is what differentiates mainstream scholarship from historical revisionism. The book you're using is trying to prove that what most scholars believe isn't true, and that makes it a tricky source to incorporate, and possibly one that shouldn't be used, if it gives undue weight to a perspective that isn't widely accepted in academia.

It's understandable that Spanish people writing at or in the centuries after the conquest would have a very negative view of the events, but that doesn't necessarily make them the best sources for what actually happened. As a rule you can quote from their writings, but not in a way that gives a one-sided impression of an entire section of the article. And it's not clear that there needs to be a separate section just detailing the "devastation" of Spain. Presumably both sides waged brutal war against the other, because that was the nature of warfare at the time. But to the extent that it's necessary to delve into specifics, the topic is covered elsewhere in the article. If an addition to an article mostly repeats things that are already mentioned, or overemphasizes them in an unbalanced way or unnecessary detail (or very vaguely, in some cases), then it probably will be deleted.

The bottom line is, the edits appeared to be advocating a particular point of view, which isn't allowed, and the source may not represent mainstream scholarship on the subject. None of the additions were attributed to the source from which they were taken, or identified in any way as quotations, or rewritten in your own words. All of these made the content inappropriate, both in terms of what the material said, and because it was a violation of another author's copyright. P Aculeius (talk) 15:04, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

Iberian Peninsula isn't Spain

Whatever the way in the past the Iberian Peninsula was called, nowadays the event this entry refers aply to the peninsula itself, that is to Portugal and to Spain. Any person can think the previous naming excluded Portugal, and we could have also an entry about the muslim conquest of Portugal, which isn't needed. Several different Wikipedias use more neutral names for this event. In Portuguese its called "Invasão muçulmana da Península Ibérica". [17]. In the Galician Wikipedia its called "Invasión musulmá da Península Ibérica" [18]. In the French Wikipedia its used also the more neutral title: Conquête musulmane de l'Hispanie [19]Mistico Dois (talk) 02:22, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Since you didn't bother to check the two extensive discussions of the page name before moving it, or open up a proper move discussion, you don't seem to be aware that this issue has been discussed at length quite recently. The state of Portugal did not exist at the time of the Muslim conquest, and countless historical and literary sources refer to the entire peninsula as "Spain", translating the Latin "Hispania", which included what is now Portugal, prior to Portugal becoming a separate state. This is not an uncontroversial move, and should not have been done without at least checking to see whether a similar move had been proposed in the past. Please return the article to its previous title [note, the article was moved back while I was typing this. Thank you.], and if you wish you can open a normal move discussion here. If you can achieve consensus for the proposed title, then and only then should it be moved. P Aculeius (talk) 02:34, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Requested move 5 January 2024

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved. Consensus to move away from the current title. There is a clear majority of editors in support of a move, and their arguments are better grounded in policy, primarily that the proposed title is more accurate and recognizable.

In opposing this move editors argued that WP:COMMONNAME supported the current title, but this was disputed and natural is only one part of WP:CRITERIA.

There is no consensus on whether to use Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula or Muslim conquest of Iberia, but it seems unlikely that further relists will resolve this question and so I am closing this discussion per WP:NOGOODOPTIONS.

Specifically, I am moving this to Muslim conquest of Iberia because it is more concise and because the sources provided by Asqueladd use "Iberia", not "Iberian Peninsula". Editors who disagree with this choice are free to open a new move request at any time. (closed by non-admin page mover) BilledMammal (talk) 19:24, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

---

Muslim conquest of Spain → Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula – I'm posting this on behalf of Mistico Dois, who moved the page without discussion yesterday, and then self-reverted at my request. I think it's possible that a new consensus has developed since last year's discussions, although to be clear I still prefer the present title: in English-language scholarship, "Spain" is understood to include Portugal during the time period covered by this article, as it has generally been used to translate "Hispania" from Roman (and Carthaginian, for that matter) times up to the establishment of Portugal as a separate state in 1143. But without a requested move, members of interested WikiProjects may not know about the discussion. Please note that this is not intended as a discussion of whether it should be the "Muslim", "Arab", or "Umayyad" conquest, which we also argued over last year. If necessary that can be debated separately, but it'll make this discussion confused. P Aculeius (talk) 15:05, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

• Note: as explained above, I oppose the move, even though I'm the one who proposed it. I posted the page move request because I wanted to generate a more thorough discussion following Mistico Dois' moves yesterday. The nomination itself should not be counted as a vote in favour of the move. P Aculeius (talk) 15:07, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Note: WikiProject Arab world has been notified of this discussion. Vanderwaalforces (talk) 17:10, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Note: WikiProject Islam has been notified of this discussion. Vanderwaalforces (talk) 17:11, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Note: WikiProject Spain has been notified of this discussion. Vanderwaalforces (talk) 17:11, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Note: WikiProject Portugal has been notified of this discussion. Vanderwaalforces (talk) 17:11, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Note: WikiProject Military history has been notified of this discussion. Vanderwaalforces (talk) 17:12, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

• Suggestion: What about Muslim conquest of Iberia for WP:CONCISE reasons? The proposed title is quite long. Bensci54 (talk) 17:57, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

That sounds like a good alternative. There is potential confusion with the Kingdom of Iberia in Georgia, but I don't think that's nearly as well-known. I still prefer the current title, but "Iberia" may be an improvement over the proposed name, and I think it's fair to include in the discussion. P Aculeius (talk) 18:01, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

This could be resolved with a hatnote pointing to Arab rule in Georgia if it is a concern. As a side note, a hatnote could be added whether the page is moved or not, since Muslim conquest of Iberia already redirects here. Bensci54 (talk) 18:10, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

•  Question: what has changed since March 2023? M.Bitton (talk) 18:14, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

What changed is that the article was moved without discussion, then moved back. I said the editor would need to open a move discussion, but it didn't appear that was happening. I thought it would be better to initiate the discussion than wait for an indefinite period for someone else to do it. P Aculeius (talk) 19:09, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

• Answer No consensus back then and the current title still seems to indicate modern Spain.Mistico Dois (talk) 18:26, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

• Support I would support moving it to Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula or Muslim conquest of Iberia, or a more neutral title. Several other Wikipedias use more neutral names for this event. In the Portuguese Wikipedia its called "Invasão muçulmana da Península Ibérica". [20]. In the Galician Wikipedia its called "Invasión musulmá da Península Ibérica" [21]. In the French Wikipedia its used also the more neutral title: Conquête musulmane de l'Hispanie [22] Even Spanish Wikipedia calls it "Conquista omeya de Hispania" [23]Mistico Dois (talk) 18:28, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

@Mistico Dois: I wouldn't say that the choice of "Invasion" (as opposed to "conquest") is a neutral choice. The invasion/reconquista historiographical duo is a staple of Islamophobic frameworks.--Asqueladd (talk) 15:41, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose per P Aculeius and what was said in the previous request. M.Bitton (talk) 18:32, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

• Support: I appreciate the reasons for the current title, but support the proposed title for sheer clarity/simplicity. "Iberian Peninsula" is just one word more, but it's precise, can't cause any confusion one way or the other, and doesn't require any further explanation about what it does or doesn't mean. Exactly what a descriptive title should do.

Further note: even if "Spain" is a translation of "Hispania", that just raises questions as to why we don't replace "Hispania" with "Spain" in most other titles that include it (e.g. in Category:Hispania), as I expect the term "Spain" is often used in those contexts too. It's common for modern authors to refer geographically to present-day country names for the convenience of readers, but I don't think that always serves well for Wikipedia article titles. For example, it's common to refer to Al-Andalus as "Islamic Spain" ([24], [25], [26], etc), but of course this would raise issues if it were used as a title on Wikipedia. R Prazeres (talk) 18:40, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

In Roman and post-Roman articles, as well as in scholarly sources "Hispania" and "Spain" are used interchangeably, depending on the preference of the authors, and sometimes just for variety. Nobody is confused by the lack of distinction of Portugal when any of the several Roman provinces called "Hispania" are rendered as "Spain"; everyone knows that there was no state called "Portugal" in Roman times, or indeed up until the eleventh century, four hundred years after the Muslim conquest. P Aculeius (talk) 19:06, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

I'm sure that any competent reader will understand the context anyways if they read further into any relevant article/book. But, given that Wikipedia's audience includes all English readers, I think it's safe to say that not "everyone" knows these things already. The average English reader probably has, at best, barely a vague idea of when Islam even started or probably no idea of what the post-Roman world looked like, etc. In fairness, one could argue that they also might not know what "Iberian Peninsula" is either, but it's a transparent thing to look up; less so what "Spain" refers to in different historical contexts. For most people, "Spain" merely means modern Spain. R Prazeres (talk) 19:20, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

I think the fact that modern Spain hasn't recently been conquered by a Muslim army (except perhaps in the minds of some far-right conspiracy theorists) might suggest that this isn't what "Spain" means in context. P Aculeius (talk) 21:28, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Even the Spanish language Wikipedia uses the more neutral and historical name Hispania instead of Spain (España): "Conquista omeya de Hispania" [27]Mistico Dois (talk) 22:00, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

• Support. It's only fair, considering the modern country of Spain has since appropriated the name "Hispania", but the Iberian Peninsula contains two countries, Spain and Portugal. The way the article is worded now makes it ambiguous, and slights one nation in favour of another. I'm not saying this was done on purpose, just that it's an obvious oversight. I would favour moving it to "Muslim conquest of Iberia" for short. It's just both fairer and clearer. Wareno (talk) 23:26, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose per WP:COMMONNAME. It is true that when Spain adopted its name there were complaints from Portugal on the grounds that "Spain" had previously referred to the Iberian Peninsula. Nonetheless, confusion is unlikely and "Muslim conquest of Spain" is the usual term in the sources. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 00:06, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

This is untrue. Most Wikipedias use a more neutral title like I showed, Iberian Peninsula or Hispania, instead of Spain. By the way what you stated is nonsensical. In the 16th century when the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon united, in 1516, and the name of Spain was adopted to the new kingdom, nobody in Portugal ever complained to my knowledge.Mistico Dois (talk) 00:47, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

• Support for clarity and precision. Move to "Muslim conquest of Iberia" would be even better. Carlstak (talk) 02:48, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose - just a quick scan through the references cited in this article indicate that "Spain" is widely used in this context:
  • Collins, Roger (1983). Early Medieval Spain
  • Collins, Roger (1989). The Arab Conquest of Spain 710–797
  • Catlos, Brian A. (May 2018). Kingdoms of Faith: A New History of Islamic Spain
  • Al-Makkari, Ahmed ibn Mohammed (2002). The History of the Mohammedan Dynasties in Spain
  • Ṭāhā, Abd al-Wāḥid Dhannūn (1989-01-01). The Muslim Conquest and Settlement of North Africa and Spain
  • Kennedy, Hugh (1996). Muslim Spain and Portugal: A political history of al-Andalus
  • Lomax, D.W. (1978). The Reconquest of Spain.
  • Roth, Norman (1976). "The Jews and the Muslim Conquest of Spain"
  • Jessica Coope (2017). The Most Noble of People: Religious, Ethnic, and Gender Identity in Muslim Spain

Glendoremus (talk) 03:34, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Most of these are outdated. Wareno (talk) 11:37, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Precisely what makes them "outdated"? The supposed failure to mention Portugal, or an arbitrary cutoff date? Any historical text written in the last couple of centuries would normally be considered a valid source for events that happened in the eighth century. And these aren't even being cited for the content of the article, but for the concept that historians have traditionally referred to the entire Iberian Peninsula (with the exception of Hugh Kennedy's book, which provides a counter-example) as Spain during the medieval period, before there was a separate state called "Portugal". This entire debate still strikes me as a nationalist argument, a bit like objecting to an article titled "British colonization of America" because the title supposedly excludes Canada. P Aculeius (talk) 13:22, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Most readers of the English Wikipedia aren't people whose first language is English. We should take that in concern. Like I showed the word "Spain" is avoided in almost other Wikipedias for a more neutral wording, like Iberian Peninsula and Hispania. Even if Spain can be seen as more neutral from an English language point of view that doesn't make it the better wording.Mistico Dois (talk) 14:43, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

I don't think that's correct. According to news reports on the web: "The top countries that accessed English Wikipedia overall to date in 2023 are the United States (33.2 billion) and the United Kingdom (9 billion) - followed by India (8.48 billion), Canada (3.95 billion) and Australia (2.56 billion), according to Wikimedia Foundation data shared with The Associated Press." If you have a different source, I'd be interested in seeing it. Thanks. Glendoremus (talk) 15:59, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

Not a valid analogy because "America" refers to the continent the US is located on and in the middle ages the name "Spain" wasn't yet applied to a single country. The circumstances have since changed. Furthermore, the article for the Roman conquest is already titled Roman conquest of the Iberian Peninsula. This issue is clearly just gonna keep coming up because the current wording breaks the rules of consensus. Wareno (talk) 14:55, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Spain is a very common term indeed. Nobody is arguing otherwise. The question is, do those sources group together Spain and Portugal and call that just "Spain"? I haven't found any source that does that. Vpab15 (talk) 14:57, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

@Vpab15: Do you think Collins' The Arab Conquest of Spain, 710–797 excludes Portugal? Srnec (talk) 15:35, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

I don't know, does it? Vpab15 (talk) 15:45, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

I don't believe the idea that scholars would distinguish between modern Spain and modern Portugal in discussing the conquest of medieval Spain (which included what is now Portugal) by the Muslims in the eighth century is at all plausible. There would be no reason to make such a distinction, because the basic facts of the conquest did not differ significantly, or constitute a separate event. At the time of the conquest, substantially all of the Iberian Peninsula had been part of what's commonly called "Visigothic Spain" for nearly a century, and before that the main exceptions were a small Byzantine province in the south and the Suebi in the west—ruling a country that does not really correspond with Portugal either; the Visigoths annexed this in the late sixth century, and prior to their arrival, the entire peninsula had been part Roman Spain—Hispania—for centuries. The conquerors certainly did not make the modern distinction. Until the establishment of Portugal as a state in the eleventh century, there is simply no reason for historians to make a linguistic distinction between "Spain" and "Portugal". P Aculeius (talk) 17:05, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

• Support. Per WP:PRECISE and WP:NDESC. Portugal is not part of Spain, and the current title will surprise and confuse readers and it violates WP:ASTONISH. There are unsubstantiated assertions that Spain in this context includes Portugal, but no evidence has been provided that when a source is using "Spain", that includes Portugal too. I find it quite unlikely that recent sources use "Spain" that way and have been unable to find any source. Unless that missing evidence is provided, the article should be moved. Vpab15 (talk) 14:54, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

  Here you go:

  "When "Spain" is used in this book it refers simply to the Iberian Peninsula."

  Catlos, Brian A. (May 2018). Kingdoms of Faith: A New History of Islamic Spain, page 5. Glendoremus (talk) 15:48, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

• Support. While the term is featured in some English-language sources (particularly in 20th-century sources), state-of-the-art academia generally prefer to frame the geographical scope as Iberia/Iberian Peninsula (I may say that Islamic is perhaps even more common than Muslim, too), thankfully leaving possible associations with dangerous and toxic Spanish essentialism behind. Most of the items of the list of sources by Glendoremus do not directly adress the concept. Most also feel dated. I feel that this article is perhaps stuck in 20th-century academia. Regarding how current academia approaches the topic (and its problematic edges) you can check

• Clarke, Nicola (2012). The Muslim Conquest of Iberia: Medieval Arabic Narratives. London: Routledge
• García Sanjuán, Alejandro (2021) "Denying the Islamic conquest of Iberia: A historiographical fraud". What Was the Islamic Conquest of Iberia? Understanding the New Debate. London: Routledge
• Clarke, Nicola (2021) "Re-reading the conquest of Iberia: The dynamism of a medieval tradition" (2021) The Routledge Hispanic Studies Companion to Medieval Iberia: Unity in Diversity. London: Routledge.

--Asqueladd (talk) 15:42, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose per WP:COMMONNAME and already made in prior discussion. Nothing new is being brought up here that wasn't already considered before. Walrasiad (talk) 19:55, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

To add an interesting ngram, "Muslim Spain" far outstrips "Muslim Iberia" or "Muslim Iberian Peninsula" by several many miles. Walrasiad (talk) 20:18, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

That is unconsequential to this discussion as what Muslims conquered was not (yet) Muslim Iberia, Muslim Spain nor Muslim Iberian Peninsula. The common name for that is "Al-Andalus". As insteresting or more interesting that the ngram above is that we have an article titled "Al-Andalus" and not an article titled "Muslim Spain" (nor "Muslim Portugal").--Asqueladd (talk) 23:43, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

It seems relevant to the extent it demonstrates that "Spain" is the usual term at all periods prior to the establishment of Portugal as an independent state. P Aculeius (talk) 00:04, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Unsubstantiated. Quality sources certainly prefer "prehistoric Iberia" over "prehistoric Spain" and certainly "Hispania" over "Roman Spain". That's why we have articles titled "Prehistoric Iberia" and "Hispania" and not "Prehistoric Spain" or "Roman Spain", non-existence of Portugal (and "Spain") notwithstanding. We also happen to have an article titled "Carthaginian Iberia" and not "Carthaginian Spain". We don't have either an article titled "Visigothic Spain", so what "all periods prior to the establishment of Portugal" are you referring to?--Asqueladd (talk) 00:12, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Published histories are evidence of general and scholarly usage, even if you refuse to acknowledge the significance of anything disagreeing with you. Wikipedia article titles are not evidence of general or scholarly usage—surely you're aware that Wikipedia is explicitly discounted as a reliable source. You also seem to be pretending that "Hispania", "España", and "Spain" are different words with different meanings, rather than the same word in Latin, Spanish, and English. The word "Iberia" also exists in all three languages, but it's not used to mean anything different in histories covering periods prior to the establishment of Portugal. Portugal was part of Spain before its establishment, and never regarded as anything didderent. The contrary argument is pure historical revisionism for nationalist purposes. P Aculeius (talk) 03:32, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Sir, I am just following your argument and the other user's argument. I did my analysis of state-of-the-art sources above (and about the current article's overreliance on 20th century sources), but you did not care to pay a visit there. I also did my educated guess about the historiographical problems of the current title (also based on sources) in the previous request, but nobody did care to comment on there. Excuse me if the ngram analyses do look silly, but I did not bring those here and yet they favour other terms to "Fooian Spain". Portugal was part of Spain before its establishment Sorry, but WTF you mean? Portugal did not exist in late antiquity. Neither what casual readers understand by "Spain" did. If you think so, you are buying into far-right national-catholic bullshit of "Spain being born with Reccared in 587". If you actually know that what casual readers understand by "Spain" did not exist in late antiquity, but well, you are willing to allow for an ambiguous term (not free of historiographical criticism and prone to power insane Islamophobic Spanish nationalism and almost necessarily requiring an inline disclaimer explaining what it is not about) to be used as a title when there are other available titles used in 21st-century academia, well, that's your choice, but be honest about it. Portuguese nationalism on Wikipedia vis-à-vis the Peninsular whole operates in the early modern period in other ways.--Asqueladd (talk) 16:24, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

even if you refuse to acknowledge the significance of anything disagreeing with you isn't this a personal attack? Super Dromaeosaurus (talk) 22:16, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

It is common to refer to "Iberians" and thus "Iberia" before the Roman conquest. After the Roman conquest, the common term is "Hispania" or "Spain". The article on the Kingdom of the Visigoths has as an alternative tile "Visigothic Spain", not "Visigothic Iberia". Walrasiad (talk) 03:36, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

To add: since ngrams are so much fun, ngrams for "Visigothic Spain" vs. "Visigothic Iberia". Now what did the Muslims conquer again? Walrasiad (talk) 03:48, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Also worth noting that the usage of "Muslim Spain" is taking a nosedive. Wareno (talk) 00:17, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

I would like to remember people that the previous discussion ended without a consensus. I also would like to point the massive NPOV in other Wikipedias is to use a more neutral naming like Iberian Peninsula or Iberia instead of Spain.Mistico Dois (talk) 21:55, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

How is "Spain" not NPOV? Walrasiad (talk) 00:06, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Whether intended or not, that choice panders to Spanish essentialism.--Asqueladd (talk) 00:24, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Because, rather obviously, people might easily think it means the current country of Spain. Even the Spanish Wikipedia uses the word Hispania.Mistico Dois (talk) 12:58, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Not really. In historical articles, it is pretty common to use terms like "Germany", "Italy", "Spain" etc. for geographic areas, without implying they refer to modern countries. e.g. in historical context, "Germany" does not imply the exclusion of Austria. Walrasiad (talk) 20:18, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

• This may be a question of scope at least as much as of usage. Some of the sources cited saying "Spain" may indeed be discussing only modern-day Spain; and, conversely, the present title may reasonably lead readers to believe that this article is only about the conquest of, well, Spain. Using "Spain" forces us to then devote the lead sentence to explaining that we do not actually mean Spain but the Iberian Peninsula. Since I do not see how any of this aids us or the reader, I am inclined to support the proposal. Surtsicna (talk) 00:26, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

• Support. WP:COMMONNAME does not apply because we are not discussing "Muslim Spain" vs. "Muslim Iberia" / "Muslim Iberian Peninsula". Rather, "Muslim conquest of X" is an WP:NDESC, and we need to describe the subject accurately so that an unfamiliar reader can easily identify it. It is not obvious to the uninitiated that historically, "Spain" can refer to the entirety of the Iberian Peninsula. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 22:34, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

But it is not more accurate. Indeed, if you want make geography a fetish, then "Iberian peninsula" is certainly incorrect. The Muslims didn't conquer Cantabria (part of the Iberian peninsula). And they conquered Septimania (Narbonensis) (not part of Iberian peninsula). Walrasiad (talk) 00:07, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

Excuse me, but it seems to be you that is making a fetish of geography. Rather obviously the Muslims didn't conquered all the Iberian Peninsula, however they did conquered more than 90% of it, which is enough for that qualification. The fact that they conquered a small part of modern Southern France isn't that much relevant since its also included in their conquest.Mistico Dois (talk) 00:35, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

The article title "Muslim conquest of most of the Iberian peninsula and part of southern France" is much too long. You know what is the common abbreviation for this event? "Muslim conquest of Spain".

Indeed, so common it far, far outweighs the proposed alternative. "Muslim conquest of Spain" (6,2110 results) versus "Muslim conquest of Iberian peninsula" (74 results). Both may be strictly inaccurate, but it is pretty clear which is the WP:COMMONNAME. Walrasiad (talk) 01:05, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

The numbers are irrelevant. What matters is here is the most accurate naming, and this should also include the global understanding of what should be considered the Iberian Peninsula or Spain, back then or now.Mistico Dois (talk) 15:20, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

the global understanding based on what? M.Bitton (talk) 15:27, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

Based in the other languages Wikipedias, for example, the name Spain is universally rejected, its used instead Iberian Peninsula or Hispania. If even the Spanish Wikipedia uses the word Hispania instead of España (Spain), thats enough for me.Mistico Dois (talk) 19:28, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

Other languages don't establish the common name in English. When you mentioned "the global understanding", I thought that you meant "the global understanding of the English Wikipedia readers". M.Bitton (talk) 13:52, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

This debate comes up frequently and as per the ngram showed by the other user the usage of "Spain" to refer to the entire Iberian Peninsula is declining sharply. It's evident that its an archaism and the understanding in English is changing too, even if this comes after all the other Wikis have already read the writing on the wall. Wareno (talk) 16:09, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

In the interest of fairness, you forgot a necessary "the" in your search term, "Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula", which when corrected brings up 2,230 results. In fact, "Muslim conquest of Iberia" does even better than "Spain", except that when you look at the results, the phrase hardly seems to appear at all. Nor does "Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula", which actually shows a nearly identical list of books about the subject, most of which don't use either phrase. The formulation with "Spain" does somewhat better, in that the word "Spain" is clearly used in the titles and summaries to mean the whole Iberian peninsula. But the exact phrase "Muslim conquest of Spain" isn't used terribly often either. The raw number of results simply doesn't paint an accurate picture for any of these phrases, although it does suggest that "Spain" is what historians most often call it, without any intention of excluding Portugal. P Aculeius (talk) 01:21, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

in that the word "Spain" is clearly used in the titles and summaries to mean the whole Iberian peninsula. it is not clearly used with the connotation you say. Super Dromaeosaurus (talk) 22:23, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

The only reason it's not clear to you is because you insist on applying an anachronistic interpretation that no credible historian would use. P Aculeius (talk) 23:15, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

If it is a problem about me, then why have several other editors raised the same worry? There isn't even any "interpretation" to "use". It is perfectly reasonable to assume not all sources using Spain mean the whole Iberian Peninsula. Super Dromaeosaurus (talk) 23:23, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

It's fair to assume that all sources discussing "Spain" centuries prior to the establishment of Portugal mean the historical Spain that existed prior to that event—not the modern state of Spain, excluding Portugal. Sources about modern history will use modern borders—something that did not exist in the eighth century. This discussion was opened because a Portuguese editor who felt insulted by being included under the heading of early medieval Spain moved the article without obtaining consensus or even opening a talk page discussion, and after self-reverting did not open a move discussion.

I opened the discussion to see whether there was a new consensus; right now I don't see one. What historians mean when they say "Spain" in the eighth century shouldn't even be the focus here: it's obviously not the modern Spanish state as opposed to Portugal. What wording historians prefer is debatable; but what Portuguese editors think English-speaking historians should prefer is not relevant: that would be nationalist editing. The discussion is about whether this article's title should change, not what editors wish historians would do. P Aculeius (talk) 23:45, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

The historical Spain you're talking about is Hispania. In no moment has it been argued to be equivalent to Spain to be discussed together, like I argued in the second RM that "Iberia" and "Iberian Peninsula" were. They are different terms. The first RM replaced "Hispania" by "Spain". You continue arguing "Spain" is the WP:COMMONNAME when there is still no consensus. Super Dromaeosaurus (talk) 00:30, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

The current name is the one settled on at the end of previous discussions. Consensus is needed to move the article to another title, not to leave it where it is. P Aculeius (talk) 00:32, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

From the second RM: and that the present name is anyway the common-name, which was less accepted; investigate whether there is an identifiable WP:COMMONAME. The current title is not supported by WP:COMMONNAME. That was not the outcome of the first or the second RMs. Super Dromaeosaurus (talk) 00:38, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

• Spain is not a common name for this event. We had a RM precisely about this before and the closing user noted that there was no consensus for the notion of "Spain" being more common to be true and that a future RM should investigate whether there is an identifiable WP:COMMONAME, effectively implying that this had not been achieved in this RM which was largely about discussing this notion. Why did then P Aculeius start a RM based on a premise that still remains unfounded and unproven? in English-language scholarship, "Spain" is understood to include Portugal during the time period covered by this article no, it isn't. And if it is, the effort for proving this remains underwhelming. This is the only article about the history of Iberia employing "Spain". As I had noted, see List of the Pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula, Timeline of the Muslim presence in the Iberian Peninsula, Roman conquest of the Iberian Peninsula.

As I had argued, the choice of scholars of employing "Spain" as the title of their papers does not indicate a deliberate choice of employing the term "Spain" over "Iberian Peninsula" (which is this article's scope) with the same meaning (the article's scope), as it could also be explained because they are focusing on Spain (which is not this article's scope), perfectly reasonable considering these two are descriptive and not proper names and also considering many of these scholars are Spaniards with the primary aim of writing Spanish history. We need further examination of sources to determine scholars using "Spain" are also explicitly including Portugal. We can find easily other instances of descriptive titles, like the current one, being employed widely, because they are simply a combination of words which make sense in that context. 115 results for "Mongol conquest of Russia" [28], but no article titled that way and no such entity as Russia existing at the time. Still, users here continue interpreting all sources using "Spain" as definitively and unambiguously referring to the territory of the Iberian Peninsula (a maximalist definition), which again is not proven.

But, even if we adopt this maximalist view, according to which all sources using "Spain" effectively use it with the same meaning as sources using "Iberia/Iberian Peninsula", so explicitly including the country of Portugal and not only the country of Spain, and are therefore perfectly comparable without further examination of the sources, "Spain" stopped being more common in 2002 (links: Spain 2001, Iberia 2001 vs. Spain 2002, Iberia 2002). The 2002 results show 452 and 461 results respectively, unfiltered ones show 586 and 517 results. We are thus discussing the majority of sources with this filter and find out that "Spain" becomes more common only through older sources (WP:AGEMATTERS). "Iberia/Iberian Peninsula" had 37 results since 2023 [29] while Spain 27 [30]. There is a clear "shift" in academia towards the proposed title, this "shift" again assuming authors are using "Spain" and "Iberian Peninsula" meaning the peninsula and not the country unambiguously and in all cases. I have been accused previously of manipulating sources to push my point in this talk page for showing this trend and arguing it is a valid point, it is indeed one and in for example the Ukraine topic area modern sources always take priority (Talk:Odesa/Archive 2#Requested move 11 July 2022, for example).

I will repeat it again. Spain is not a common name for this event. This, still, remains unproven. Super Dromaeosaurus (talk) 22:14, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

Strong support per WP:AGEMATTERS, WP:PRECISE, WP:CONCISE. No objection to using "Iberia" over "Iberian Peninsula" though per consistency and to avoid any potential confusion with Georgia I would favor the longer one. Super Dromaeosaurus (talk) 22:14, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

• Post-move comment: in theory "Muslim conquest of Iberia" is more appropriate than "Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula" as it is more common (299 vs. 227 results in Google Scholar [31] [32]). Definitively represents an improvement from the former title.

It is worth noting however that with "Iberia" this article does not comply WP:CONSISTENT with the parent article Iberian Peninsula and with historical articles like Roman conquest of the Iberian Peninsula. Furthermore, the article may be easily confused with Umayyad invasion of Iberia, an article about the Georgian kingdom of Iberia. I won't start another move over this though. Super Dromaeosaurus (talk) 20:01, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Terrible move, worst of all possible solutions. Iberia is in the Caucasus. The title now is unrecognizable. Walrasiad (talk) 18:18, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

I have boldly moved the article to the fuller name consistent with the RM result. The article Umayyad invasion of Iberia should also be moved, but for now I've put up hatnotes. Srnec (talk) 12:56, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I agree with that, per WP:PRECISE, thanks. R Prazeres (talk) 17:43, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

Note dispute

P Aculeius. I continue arguing against your preferred wording of the note. In no moment has it been proven that "Spain" is universally employed by scholars in this topic to refer to "Iberian Peninsula". The note had "some" next to historians since 1 August 2023 until 10 January 2024, when you restored the past version knowing it was controversial and without seeking discussion.

I propose having an informal WP:3O. FOARP, you close the last (non-ongoing) RM (#Requested move 28 March 2023). I know it has been a while, but would you say that in that RM consensus was formed that would defend this edit [33]? I am arguing the inclusion of "some" next to "historians" to reflect that "Spain" being used as meaning "Iberian Peninsula" is not a universally held view. P Aculeius' edit implies that this view is universal. Is there consensus, as the RM above is still ongoing and this issue is not in debate there, for P Aculeius' interpretation? Super Dromaeosaurus (talk) 23:43, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

It doesn't say that it's universally employed. The fact that the note and the text to which it belongs clearly says that several different formulations are used is clear. Adding qualifications to negative every statement is unnecessary and POV pushing. I restored the previous wording because I hadn't noticed that someone had added unnecessary qualifications since the note was written. Adding invisible comments to the footnote is inappropriate, as is tagbombing it as POV simply because you read it as a blanket statement of all historians everywhere, despite the clear context: the subject of the article can be called several things, but when historians refer to it as "Spain", they mean the whole peninsula. That doesn't mean all historians everywhere refer to it as "Spain". It means that's what they're using "Spain" to mean when they use it—there is no reliable source for the proposition that historians discussing eighth-century Spain intend to exclude Portugal, which did not yet exist, and did not become independent from Spain until the twelfth century. If you can find a reliable source that claims historians mean something else when discussing eighth-century Spain, please cite it. P Aculeius (talk) 23:56, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

• We had a similar dispute over the definition of “Axis Powers”, and which countries were members of the Axis. It was resolved by referring explicitly to the texts that used a particular formulation.

I don’t know if the sources discuss this issues, but if sourcing does discuss this issue it would be a good idea to cite it.

However, “some” is just a statement of fact and I don’t think needs to be such a massive dispute over it to be frank. FOARP (talk) 08:42, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

P Aculeius, can you bring any source stating this is the standard academic practice? Any scholars who have stated that "Spain" is the way to refer to the Iberian Peninsula in this epoch? Super Dromaeosaurus (talk) 10:43, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Glendoremus cited nine modern historical works that clearly use "Spain" to refer to the entire peninsula. While other participants in the above conversation were able to cite works that use other names, none have been cited stating that historians using "Spain" to refer to events of the eighth century mean only the portion that constitutes the modern Spanish state, and excludes Portugal. I will add two standard English-language reference works to the above list.

The Oxford Classical Dictionary (2nd edition, the one I have access to), uses "Spain" synonymously with "the peninsula" (under the heading of "Spain") to include the conquests of Augustus to the northern and western coasts. In its brief discussion of the Visigothic conquests, it makes no distinction between Spain and Portugal—which would be an anachronism, and does not have its own entry. Under "Suebi", it mentions that they "entered Spain in 409 and founded a kingdom in Gallaecia, which lasted until destroyed by the Visigoths in 585. The Spanish Suebi were converted to Catholicism by St. Martin of Braga c. 560" (emphasis supplied). Under "Iberia", we find "one of the ancient names for Spain" (emphasis supplied).

The Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography lists Spain under "Hispania", but after a full page discussing the various names applied to the peninsula and portions thereof by various peoples and what the likely origins might be, uses "Spain" for the various section headings within the article: "Spain as known to the Greeks", "Spain as known to the Carthaginians and the Romans", and internally uses "Spain" and "Spanish", and quoting Arnold's History of Rome, refers to "the Spanish peninsula". Under "Gothi", the section on the Visigothic conquest mentions "Spain", without distinguishing part of it as "Portugal", concluding with, "in Spain their empire was overthrown about two centuries later by the Saracens."

It should be undisputed that the use of "Spain" by historians covering all periods prior to the establishment of Portugal means the entire peninsula; what is now Portugal remained part of Spain until the twelfth century. I do not think that there is any reliable source to support your assertion that historians using "Spain" to refer to events of the eighth century disagree as to its meaning, or that any significant number of them have used it to refer only to the area occupied by the modern Spanish state to the exclusion of Portugal; the assertion that "some" historians do so is not supported by anything in this conversation. The assertion that "historians use 'Spain' to refer to the entire peninsula during this period of time" is accurate, and qualifying it by adding "some" implies that other historians use the word "Spain" to mean something else during the same period, a claim that is not supported by anything. P Aculeius (talk) 15:21, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Just restore the explanatory note to its previous, stable version (i.e. with "Some sources use "Spain" to refer to (...)"), per WP:STATUSQUO. That version is sufficiently neutral and it's the type of phrasing often followed elsewhere to avoid any potential WP:WEASEL wording (even if well-intentioned). Unless there are reliable sources explicitly stating that there is a standard academic usage and what it is (so far I've only seen a lot of WP:SYNTH), Wikipedia should not claim or imply that all or most historians follow a particular usage.

Or better yet, since the note itself is unsourced, I don't see how it merits being kept at all anymore. After the recent page move, the footnote no longer serves to clarify anything in the text. And since this article has a descriptive title for an event that has no conventionalized name, it's a little pointless to try to cover all the possible informal descriptions one can find in publications. R Prazeres (talk) 21:05, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

Sorry, I missed this but as a very brief note - keep as Spain. History isn't a science so don't treat it as one. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 21:48, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

Apologies for not replying, I couldn't find the time. Yeah, this is finally the kind of argument that you should've brought all this time. I notice though that the sources are old. The second edition of the Oxford Classical Dictionary was published in 1970, while Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography is originally from the 19th century. No authors used "Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula/Iberia" during or before 1970 [34]. That we have gone from this to "Iberian Peninsula/Iberia" having been more common for two decades indicates to me a clear shift and that we need more recent sources. Could you bring sources from the 21st century, which is when this shift took place?

In any case the wording of the note is problematic. Historians use "Spain" to refer to the entire Iberian Peninsula prior to the establishment of the Kingdom of Portugal in the twelfth century. would indicate that historians use only "Spain", not even "Iberian Peninsula" or "Iberia", to refer to the peninsula during this period, which is obviously not true. And anyway, as other editors have noted, now that the article has been moved and that the note no longer fullfills its purpose, and considering it is unsourced anyway, P Aculeius, would you agree to removing this part and only keeping the alternate names used for this event? Super Dromaeosaurus (talk) 20:01, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

No, your reading is illogical and unnatural. Why are you beating a dead horse? Find some other war to wage, already. P Aculeius (talk) 20:35, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

That's not a very useful reply. Do you actually believe the current note, in the context of the current title/lead, serves any purpose for readers? R Prazeres (talk) 20:38, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

You keep saying the same thing over and over without understanding that it does not imply that all historians everywhere use this terminology exclusively. It simply explains what historians who use it mean—and not one single solitary piece of evidence, argument, or claim from any other source whatsoever states that they mean anything else by it! Insisting without a single good reason that only some historians use it to mean one thing necessarily means that other historians use it to mean something else, and that is completely unsubstantiated, without the slightest support. Continuing to argue over it without any basis in fact or policy is not collaborative editing; it is just bludgeoning. P Aculeius (talk) 22:39, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

@P Aculeius, you're continuing to drag this argument as much as anyone else. Rather than continuing with this semantic debate, could you answer my question above? R Prazeres (talk) 23:01, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

I already answered you, and you're not listening. I was done with this discussion on January 9, and so was pretty much everyone else until SD decided to launch a war over it ten days later, and you joined in. The note serves a perfectly valid purpose: explaining what is meant by a disputed term used to refer to the topic. It does not say what you keep claiming it says, it never did, and no reasonable reading of it supports your argument, nor has any valid reason for changing it to say what SD keeps arguing it should say ever been presented. At this point you're just arguing for the sake of winning, and it needs to stop. P Aculeius (talk) 23:50, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Also, stop pinging me every time you want to continue an argument I already said I was done with. P Aculeius (talk) 23:52, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Why are you so permanently hostile and unpleasant to talk with? The note no longer serves any purpose, the article has been moved and no longer uses a disputed term. If you're done with the argument, I assume I can remove the note without getting reverted. If I am not correct we will need more discussing and your current attitude will not help with it. It's just the way things work here in this website. Super Dromaeosaurus (talk) 00:01, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

Let's remove the unsourced note and be done with it. R Prazeres (talk) 00:37, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

Just went ahead and did it ([35]), to save someone else the trouble. R Prazeres (talk) 00:42, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

Thank you, I was thinking of doing that too. Let's leave it here and waste no more time with this. Super Dromaeosaurus (talk) 10:05, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

• Roger Collins, The Arab Conquest of Spain, 710–797. A modern scholarly monograph. Robet Hoyland, In God's Path: The Arab Conquests and the Creation of an Islamic Empire, uses "Spain" throughout, never "Iberia". I don't care about the note, but let's not pretend that it is hard to source this usage of "Spain". Srnec (talk) 21:49, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

This short comment of yours is as strong of an effort as the one it has been made throughout three RMs to prove this claim. Some comments above I expressed some more openness to accepting this claim if more modern sources could be brought to light. Which yours is. Super Dromaeosaurus (talk) 00:29, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

Name of peninsula

Why was Hispania changed to Iberia? The land was historically known as Hispania. H20346 (talk) 06:09, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

We aren't required to use the geographical names used at the time. "Hispania" was dropped at #Requested move 15 March 2023 and "Iberia" was adopted at #Requested move 5 January 2024. You can read the brief closing comments as a summary. Super Dromaeosaurus (talk) 00:29, 25 January 2024 (UTC)