238  

of rulers and noble families. Among these men was ˇàriq, the client
of Mùsà. Ibn Óabìb’s history reflected these concerns, which I have
explored elsewhere.81 He also quoted a passage, probably taken from
an eastern source, which is ostensibly a conversation between a gov-
ernor of Kufa at the end of the eighth century and a scholar about
the famous scholars of the Islam.82 One by one, they were identified
as clients rather than men of pure Arab origin. The emir’s rage at
this unwelcome information was appeased only by the naming of
two genuine Arabs. The Berbers in al-Andalus were similarly a vic-
tim of their non-Arab origins. Ibn Óabìb’s pupil seems to have added
to the “History” a prophecy that Cordoba would be destroyed by
the Berbers.83
Berbers from North Africa would continue to be recruited as mer-
cenaries at times of internal strife in al-Andalus, such as the strug-
gles between the brothers of 'Abd al-Ra˙màn I and his nephew
al-Óakam I. Particularly galling to the Arabic historians was the role
of the Berbers in the rise of al-Manßur at the end of the tenth cen-
tury and the collapse of the caliphate. Berbers continued to desta-
bilize the Andalusian polity right through to the arrival of the
Almohads and Almoravids. No wonder then, that the role of the
Berbers in the conquest was played down and that of Mùsà ibn
Nusayr, a man with an impeccable Arab background whose father
had been a member of the royal guard of the caliph Mu'àwiya,84
became central. As the politics and culture of al-Andalus became
more sophisticated and emulated that of Baghdad—perhaps not
before the ninth century and reaching its zenith in the mid-tenth
century—all things Arab were praised and the Berbers denigrated.
Genealogists such as Ibn Óazm,85 writing in the eleventh century,
were anxious to give their subjects prestigious Arab genealogies and
an ancestor who came to al-Andalus at the time of the conquest. Ibn
Óabìb mentioned members of the “followers”—noble Arab families
whose immediate ancestors had been companions of Mu˙ammad—

81
A. Christys, “The History of 'Abd al-Malik ibn Óabìb and ethnogenesis in al-
Andalus”, Power and the Construction of Communities, ed. W. Pohl and H. Reimitz (forth-
coming).
82
Ibn Óabìb, Kitàb al-Ta"rìkh, pp. 173–4.
83
Ibid., p. 151.
84
Ibid., p. 138.
85
Ibn Óazm, Jamharat ansab al-'arab, ed. 'A.M. Harun (Cairo 1971).
    239

who came to al-Andalus, although he was not sure how many of

them had participated in the conquest.86 Ibn Idhàrì, writing in the
thirteenth century, noted that Arabs from North Africa came to al-
Andalus with two of the early governors, al-Óurr in 716 and al-
Sam˙ in 718,87 and Abu al-Khattar brought thirty members of his
tribe, the Kalbis, in c. 742. Arab origins were even invented for the
Berbers by Islamic scholars, who divided them into two groups, the
Butr and the Baranis, and gave them two origins, one in Palestine,
and the other in Yemen. There are very few references to these ori-
gins in the first centuries after the conquest.88 Such distortions have
also bedevilled discussions of the fate of the Berbers of al-Andalus
in the Umayyad period, especially the highly controversial subject of
Berber settlement in al-Andalus. There is little reference to Andalusis
who spoke Berber, and their languages left little trace on Romance,
in contrast to Arabic. By the eleventh century it is difficult to find
traces of the Berbers who arrived with the conquest of 711. These
recreations of history made the conquest look more Arab than it in
fact was.
Working from a different historiographical perspective to that of
scholars of the first, “Germanic”, transformation of Hispania, it is
impossible to answer all the “leading questions” posed to the con-
tributors to this volume. Analysis of any socio-economic or consti-
tutional developments which may have taken place in the first three
centuries after the conquest are too dependent on late and contra-
dictory sources usefully to be debated here. Not until the tenth cen-
tury did the rulers of al-Andalus actively promote an official line on
the origins of the Umayyad state and only for this period do we
have the evidence that Roman, or rather Byzantine, ritual played
an important role in this—if we are to believe our sources.89 Both
the Latin and the Arabic evidence considered in this paper show

86
Ibn Óabìb, Kitàb al-Ta"rìkh, p. 138.
87
Ibn Idhàrì, Al-Bayàn al-Mughrib, ed. R. Dozy, E. Lévi-Provençal and G. Colin,
2 vols. (Leiden 1948/51) p. 25.
88
Brett and Fentress, The Berbers, p. 92; M. Brett, “The Islamization of Morocco
from the Arabs to the Almoravids”, Journal of Moroccan Studies 2 (1992) pp. 57–71;
repr. id., Ibn Khaldun and the Medieval Maghreb (Aldershot 1999); H. de Felipe, “Leyendas
árabes sobre el orígen de los beréberes”, Al-Qantara 11/2 (1990) pp. 379–98.
89
M. Barceló, “El Califa patente: el ceremonial omeya de Córdoba o la esceni-
ficación del poder”, Estructuras y formas del poder en la historia, ed. R. Pastor, I. Kienie-
wicz, E. García de Enterría et al. (Salamanca 1991) pp. 51–71.
240  

the transformation of Hispania after 711 as an episode in which

questions concerning the relationship between gens and regnum may
be addressed. The author of the “Chronicle of 754” did indeed write
up the conquest period as though it were another “barbarian” migra-
tion, although he was perhaps too influenced by his reading of Isidore.
Isidore’s Hispania, which had absorbed the Goths and Hispano-
Romans, seemed to absorb the new gentes of 711 almost seamlessly
into the beloved regnum. The Arabic histories’ rewriting of the events
of the conquest to suit the Arabicized world of the ninth century
and after provide an alternative ethnogenesis which may be seen as
a distorting mirror image of a similar process of state formation.
Here the focus was more on gens than regnum. The stories about the
rivalry between the Berber ˇàriq and the Arab Mùsà, and the
invented Arabs who took part in the conquest, are part of a refor-
mulation which explained how a largely Berber army of the con-
quest became the Andalusis of Hispania.
    241

APPENDIX: The Governors of al-Andalus

Chronicle of 754 Ibn Habib Prophetic chronicle

Musa Era 749 Mùsà ibn Nusayr Musa 1 year 3 months

2 years 1 month
'Abd al-Aziz 3 years 'Abd al-Azìz ibn Mùsà 'Abd al-Aziz 2 years
2 years 6 months
Ayub 1 month Ayub 1 month
Al-Hurr 3 years Al-Hurr ibn 'Abd al- Al-Hurr 2 years
Ra˙màn al-Thaqafì 10 months
2 years 8 months
Al-Samh Al-Sam˙ ibn Malik al- Al-Samh 2 years
Khawlanì 2 years 9 months
9 months
'Abd al-Rahman 'Abd al-Rahman ibn
1 month Abdullah 1 month
Anbasah 4 1/2 years 'Anbasa ibn Sa˙ìm al- 'Udra 1 month
Kalbì 4 years 5 months
Yahya 3 years Yahya ibn Salàma Yahya ibn Salama
2 years 6 months 2 years 6 months
Odiffa 6 months Hadhìfa ibn al-A˙ùsß Hudhaifa ibn al-Ahwas
al-'Abasì 1 year 6 months
Uthman 4 months Uthmàn ibn Abi Nasca al- Uthman ibn Abi Nisa
Khathcàmì 5 months 4 months
Haytham 1 year Al-Haytham ibn 'Abìd Al-Haytham ibn 'Ubayd
4 months 10 months
Muhammad al-Ashjai Muhammad ibn Ashjai
1 month
'Abd al-Rahman 3 years 'Abd al-Rahman ibn 'Abd al-Rahman ibn
'Abd Allah 2 years 'Abd Allah 1 year
8 months 10 months
'Abd al-Malik almost 'Abd al-Malik ibn Qatßan 'Abd al-Malik ibn Qatan
4 years al-Fihrì 4 years 2 years
Uqba 'Uqba ibn al-Hajjàj al 'Uqba ibn al-Hajaj
Salùlì 5 years 2 months 4 year 5 months
'Abd al-Malik 1 year
1 month
Balj ibn Bishr al-Qaysì
11 months
Thcalaba ibn Salàma al- Tawaba ibn Salama
'Àmalì 5 months 1 year 2 months
Abu al-Khattar Hisham Abu al-Khatàr 2 years
ibn Dirar al-Kalbi
2 years
Thalabah Abu Thawàba al-
Jadhamì
Yusuf 6 years 9 months Yùsuf ibn 'Abd al- Yusuf 11 years
Era 785 Ra˙màn
[to 138 AH]
This page intentionally left blank
GENTES, KINGS AND KINGDOMS—THE EMERGENCE OF
STATES: THE KINGDOM OF THE GIBICHUNGS

Ian N. Wood

The successor states of Western Europe and North Africa are one
of the distinguishing features of the post-Roman period, possibly the
most distinctive feature of all, yet each state was created in different
circumstances, even if a number of them can be seen as beginning
their independent existence in the 470s. Equally, each state ended
in different circumstances, some already in the 530s, others in much
later transformations. Just as important, each was written up at
different times and for different reasons—those that collapsed early
were less likely to be represented to suit the needs of later genera-
tions, except as foils for their victorious conquerors. This question
of the dating of our sources is a point of particular significance when
one considers the literary accounts of the creation of each gens that
constitute their ethnogenesis. In thinking comparatively about state
formation, it is as well to keep chronology firmly in mind. The
Burgundians of the fourth century can usefully be set alongside other
peoples mentioned in the pages of Ammianus Marcellinus: those of
the fifth need to be compared with the peoples who established them-
selves in Gaul at the same time: their demise in the sixth century
naturally suggests comparison with the Vandals and Ostrogoths.
Unlike these last two peoples, however, the Burgundian kingdom
had a Nachleben in Frankish Burgundy, which has no parallels in
Byzantine Africa or sixth-century Italy, but may bring to mind other
groups subjected to the Franks in the Carolingian period, notably
the Lombards and Saxons.
Although the Burgundians already appear in the writings of Pliny1
and Ptolemy,2 and are attested in the Byzantine historian Zosimus’
account of events in the third century, notably as opponents of the
Emperor Probus,3 they first receive significant attention in the fourth

1
Pliny, Historia Naturalis 4,99, ed. G. Winkler and R. König (Munich 1988).
2
Ptolemy, Geographia 2,11,8, ed. C. Müller (Paris 1883).
3
Zosimus, Histoire Nouvelle 1,68, ed. F. Paschoud, vol. 1 (Paris 1971).
244  . 

century, when Ammianus Marcellinus recounts Valentinian I’s use

of them against Macrianus, king of the Alamans.4 In setting out this
narrative Ammianus makes a number of observations: first, that the
Burgundians were related to the Romans:5 second that they had long
been enemies of the Alamans, with whom they quarrelled over bor-
ders and access to salt-mines:6 and finally that they were ruled over
by a pair of leaders—a general, the hendinos, who could be deposed
in the event of ill-fortune, and a priest-king, the sinistus, whose power
was for life.7 That they were enemies of the Alamans is not unlikely,
nor is the significance of frontiers and salt in causing conflict. The
other two statements are more problematic. The dual rulership over
the Burgundians is often cited in discussions of sacral kingship,8 and
Ammianus himself makes comparison with the Egyptians: ut solent
Aegyptii casus eius modi suis assignare rectoribus. The use of the present
tense solent in the comparison with Egypt, however, suggests that
Ammianus was drawing his information from an old source, for the
description of Burgundian kingship is scarcely compatible with what
is known about Egyptian attitudes to their rulers in the Late Roman
period.9 Even if the comparison with Egypt were ever valid, there
is no reason to think that Ammianus’ observation held true for the
Burgundians of the fourth century. Certainly the information can-
not be used as the basis for understanding the political structures of
the fourth-century Burgundians, particularly when there is no other
evidence to suggest the existence of such a set-up. That the Burgundians
were ruled by kings is as near certain as can be, but one can deduce
no more from Ammianus’ comments. What he has to say about the
relationship of the Burgundians to the Romans is perhaps more help-
ful. Clearly this cannot be founded on biological reality, but the
Romans are known to have referred to their allies as being related
to them by blood.10 The likelihood is that the stated relationship

4
Ammianus Marcellinus, Res Gestae 28,5,9; 30,7,11, ed. J.C. Rolfe (Cambridge
Mass. 1935–39).
5
Ibid. 28,5,11.
6
Ibid.
7
Ibid. 28,5,14.
8
See most recently J. Favrod, Histoire politique du royaume burgonde (443–534)
(Lausanne 1997) pp. 43–4.
9
I.N. Wood, “Kings, Kingdoms and Consent”, Early Medieval Kingship, ed. P.H.
Sawyer and I.N. Wood (Leeds 1977) pp. 6–29, here p. 27.
10
I.N. Wood, “Defining the Franks: Frankish Origins in Early Medieval Histo-
   245

between Burgundians and Romans originated in imperial diplomacy.

The statement, nevertheless, constitutes the earliest written reference
to the ethnogenesis of the Burgundians. Moreover, although it is an
ethnogenesis which is likely to have been created by the Romans
rather than Burgundians, it may have had some impact on the rul-
ing elite of the Burgundians themselves, and indeed Ammianus explic-
itly claims that it was the Burgundians who knew of their Roman
descent (subolem se esse Romanam Burgundii sciunt).11
A generation later Orosius offered another comment on the peo-
ple. For him 80,000 Burgundians, “a new enemy with a new name”,
descended on the Rhine, but following the subjugation of Germania
by Tiberius and Drusus they were settled in burgi, whence they gained
their name.12 Orosius thus provides the people with a second ethno-
genesis, and like that of Ammianus it is a Roman one, depending
this time on a bogus Latin etymology. He adds the interesting, but
puzzling information, that by his own day, that is the second decade
of the fifth century, the Burgundians were Catholic.13 The accuracy
of this need not concern us, but it will be necessary to consider the
extent to which the Arianism of Gundobad and some of those sur-
rounding him helped differentiate the Burgundians from the Gallo-
Romans.14

riography”, Concepts of National Identity in the Middle Ages, ed. S. Forde, L. Johnson
and A.V. Murray, Leeds Texts and Monographs. New Series 14 (Leeds 1995) pp.
47–57, here p. 51.
11
Favrod, Histoire politique du royaume burgonde, p. 42 rightly notes that this is a
Burgundian claim, but it is likely, given the parallels noted in I.N. Wood, “Ethnicity
and the ethnogenesis of the Burgundians”, Typen der Ethnogenese unter besonderer
Berücksichtigung der Bayern 1, ed. W. Pohl and H. Wolfram, Denkschriften der Öster-
reichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, philosophisch-historische Klasse 201.
Veröffentlichungen der Kommission für Frühmittelalterforschung 12 (Wien 1990)
pp. 53–69, here pp. 57–8, that the connection between the Romans and Burgundians
originated in Roman ideology.
12
Orosius, Historiarum adversum paganos libri VII 7,32,11–12, ed. K. Zangemeister,
CSEL 5 (Vienna 1882; repr. Hildesheim 1967). See Wood, “Ethnicity and the
ethnogenesis of the Burgundians”, pp. 56–7.
13
Orosius, Historiarum adversum paganos 7,32,13.
14
For the question of the religion of the Burgundians, Wood, “Ethnicity and the
ethnogenesis of the Burgundians”, pp. 58–60. The argument has been challenged
by Favrod, Histoire politique du royaume burgonde, but his criticism fails to take full
account of the evidence for Catholicism among the Burgundians. If one argues that
Orosius is incorrect, one has to explain away the presence of Catholics among the
Burgundians before the conversion of Sigismund: if one argues that the Burgundians
were originally converted to Catholicism, one has to explain the presence of Arians
at Gundobad’s court. One possibility is that the distinction between the beliefs of
246  . 

By the time that Orosius was writing Burgundians were to be

found on the Rhine.15 They had probably taken advantage of the
chaos of the years 406–7 to move westwards.16 According to Olym-
piodorus their phylarch Guntiarius (= Gundichar) was instrumental
in the appointment of the usurper Jovian in 41117—if so he was not
to be the last Burgundian to elevate a Roman emperor. The activ-
ities of Burgundians within the Empire, however, were sharply cur-
tailed in the mid 430s when they were defeated by Aetius.18 The
fullest statement of this is by Prosper, who comments: “Aetius wore
down in war Gundichar, king of the Burgundians, who was living
in Gaul, and granted him the peace for which he was begging, which
he did not enjoy for long, since the Huns destroyed him and his
people utterly.”19 Some, however, survived, and Aetius was later to
settle a group of Burgundians in Sapaudia,20 which lay largely to the
north of Lake Geneva, in the Roman province of Maxima Sequa-
norum.21 How sizeable this group was, and whether it included all
the Burgundians who survived the cataclysm on the Rhine is un-
clear. What is certain is that Aetius’ policy of resettling the Bur-
gundians paid off, since they subsequently fought for him at the
Battle of the Catalaunian or Mauriac Plains—a battle of some impor-
tance both for Aetius and for the Burgundians themselves, as we will
see.22 The settlement out of which the Burgundian kingdom devel-

the Burgundians and the Catholic episcopate only really became clear after the set-
tlement in Sapaudia, and that it was only after the settlement that individuals could
clearly be classified as Arian or Catholic.
15
Prosper of Aquitaine, Epitoma Chronicon s.a. 413, ed. T. Mommsen, MGH AA
9 (Berlin 1892; repr. Munich 1981).
16
The sole evidence for this move, however, is Jerome, Lettres 123, ed. J. Labourt,
vol. 7 (Paris 1961), discussed by Favrod, Histoire politique du royaume burgonde, pp.
45–6.
17
Olympiodorus, Fragmenta 17, ed. and transl. R.C. Blockley, The Fragmentary
Classicising Historians of the Later Roman Empire 2 (Liverpool 1982; repr. 1983).
18
The Chronicle of Hydatius and the Consularia Constantinopolitana 108 (= 436), ed.
R.W. Burgess (Oxford 1993); Chronicorum a. CCCCLII 118 (= 436), ed. T. Mommsen,
MGH AA 9 (Berlin 1892); Chronicorum a. DXI 596 (= 436?), ed. T. Mommsen,
MGH AA 9 (Berlin 1892).
19
Prosper of Aquitaine, Epitoma Chronicon 1322 (= 435).
20
Chronicorum a. CCCCLII 128 (= 443). The chronology of the Chronicle is, how-
ever, totally unreliable: see I.N. Wood, “The fall of the western empire and the
end of Roman Britain”, Britannia 18 (1987) pp. 251–62, here pp. 253–6.
21
The fullest recent discussion of Sapaudia is to be found in Favrod, Histoire poli-
tique du royaume burgonde, pp. 100–17.
22
Jordanes, De origine actibusque Getarum 36,191, ed. F. Giunta and A. Grillone,
Fonti per la storia d’Italia 117 (Rome 1991) [henceforth: Jordanes, Getica].
   247

oped was, therefore, entirely dependent on the policy and actions of

a Roman general.
In later tradition the destruction of the Rhineland Burgundians
was an epic moment. The story is at the heart of numerous epics
and legends, which have prompted the much-debated question Gab
es ein Burgunderreich bei Worms? That the destruction of a Burgundian
kingdom took place, and that the memory of its end was transformed
into legend is not in question. There is, however, no indication that
any significant memory of the event was preserved by those Bur-
gundians who were subsequently settled in Sapaudia.23 Indeed if the
memory had been carried by the Gibichungs and their followers,
it would surely have presented the destruction of the Rhineland king-
dom as a prelude to another settlement, and not as a final cata-
clysm. If the memory of the destruction of the kingdom of Gundichar
were to be ascribed to Burgundians, one might speculate as to whether
that memory was preserved by Burgundians who never transferred
to Sapaudia, and who perhaps descended from groups opposed to
the Gibichungs. Such a possibility is raised by the existence in the
late sixth and seventh centuries of the family of the Burgundofarones,
who are associated with the region round Melun, in Frankish Neustria,
rather than any part of the Burgundian kingdom.24 One might equally
hypothesise that the story of the destruction of the Rhineland king-
dom was elaborated by neighbouring peoples, like the Franks, who
had no wish to remember Burgundian survival. On the other hand
it is far from clear that the ethnicity of the legendary Rhineland

23
P. Amory, “Names, ethnic identity, and community in fifth- and sixth-century
Burgundy”, Viator 25 (1994) pp. 1–30, here p. 13, rightly comments on the lack of
interest shown in the historical background of the Burgundians by Avitus, Gundobad
or Sigismund. W. Goffart, “Conspicuously absent: martial heroism in the Histories
of Gregory of Tours and its likes”, The World of Gregory of Tours, ed. K. Mitchell
and I.N. Wood (Leiden 2002) pp. 365–93, to my mind rightly denies that there
was an unwritten Burgundian tradition about the fall of Gundichar’s kingdom.
24
Jonas of Bobbio, Vita Columbani 1,26; 2,7, ed. B. Krusch, MGH SSrG 37
(Hannover 1905). But see also Hildegar of Meaux, Vita Faronis, ed. J. Mabillon,
Acta Sanctorum Ordinis sancti Benedicti (Mâcon 1936) pp. 606–25, for an account
of the family set in the context of Gibichung history. The Burgundofarones or
Faronids are extensively studied by R. Le Jan, Famille et pouvoir dans le monde franc
(VIIe–IXe siècle) (Paris 1995) pp. 388–95, where the majority of the family is placed
firmly in the region of Meaux, with only one group having links with the “confins
de l’Austrasie et de la Bourgogne”. See also ead., “Convents, violence, and com-
petition for power in seventh-century Francia”, Topographies of Power in the Early Middle
Ages, ed. M. de Jong, F. Theuws and C. van Rhijn, The Transformation of the
Roman World 6 (Leiden 2001) pp. 243–69, here pp. 250–2, 254.