A century earlier, in 632, “Prophet” Muhammad died, and his Arab followers expanded beyond Arabia. By the early eighth century, they controlled much of the (formerly) Christian territory of North Africa, and crossed into Spain.
The Visigothic kingdom collapsed after the invasion of 711, and most of the Iberian Peninsula came under the rule of the Umayyad Caliphate.
Now, exactly 100 years after Muhammad’s death, Muslim armies crossed the Pyrenees into what is today France, threatening to bring even more of Christian Europe under Islamic rule.
Charles Martel stopped them.
The Muslim Conquest Reaches France
To understand the Battle of Tours we have to go back twenty years. In 711 Tariq ibn Ziyad crossed the Strait of Gibraltar and defeated the Visigothic king Roderic. He ordered their fleet burned, and said, “We have not come here to return. Either we conquer and establish ourselves here, or we perish.”
Eight years later the Muslims occupied Narbonne and established a permanent base north of the Pyrenees. From there they launched further attacks into Europe while the Frankish rulers struggled to stop them.
In 721 a Muslim army besieged Toulouse and Odo defeated it outside the city. The victory showed that the invaders could be beaten but Narbonne remained under Muslim control and the fighting continued..
Then in 732 Abd al-Rahman attacked again. His army crossed the western Pyrenees into Aquitaine where Odo tried to resist near Bordeaux but suffered a nuclear defeat. The Chronicle of 754, written by a Christian living under Muslim rule in Spain only a generation later, described the scale of the slaughter:
“He gave battle to Duke Eudes beyond the Garonne and the Dordogne, and put him to flight—so utterly that God alone knew the number of the slain and wounded.”
With Odo’s forces broken the Muslim army advanced farther into Frankish territory. They plundered, enslaved, raped, and destroyed churches.
Odo now realized he could not stop Abd al-Rahman alone. So he turned to a man who was previously his political enemy: Charles Martel.
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The Man Who Stopped Them
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