[5]: 91, 235 The Exarchate of Africa was divided into ducates led by a duke (Latin: dux[nb 5], Greek: δούξ), also called strategos (στρατηγός).
Treadgold views these army troops as intended to garrison Africa after its reconquest, while the naval and mercenary elements were there only temporarily to help effect it.
[10]: 338 The only serious resistance the Arabs encountered after this was the fortress of Septem Fratres (Ceuta), which held out until 711, and the local Moorish tribes (Berbers) in the hinterlands.
[12]: 47 A better manuscript with vowels was available to Torrey, who in his critical edition of the Arabic text, gave the least corrupt form as بؙلْيان (Bulyan), which he supposed should be corrected to يُلْيان (Yulyan).
The latter rejoicing at his coming, said, I will bring thee to AndalusJones thinks that Christian writers do not mention Julian either out of ignorance, or as a deliberate choice to avoid scandalising their readers with a tale of state betrayal for personal revenge.
[12]: 48 Jones also finds no reason to doubt the Arab chronicles' assertion that Julian sought revenge for an insult to his daughter, although this is not necessarily the exclusive reason, and admits that the timeline is problematic, as Roderic only became king the same year that Julian is supposed to have betrayed him, and he finds it problematic to interpret the text as implying that the insult occurred before Roderic assumed the kingship.
[2]: 205 [12]: 54–5 Luis García de Valdeavellano writes that, during the Umayyad conquest of North Africa, in "their struggle against the Byzantines and the Berbers, the Arab chieftains had greatly extended their African dominions, and as early as the year 682 Uqba had reached the shores of the Atlantic, but he was unable to occupy Tangier, for he was forced to turn back toward the Atlas Mountains by a mysterious person" who became known to history and legend as Count Julian.
Muslim historians have referred to him as Ilyan or Ulyan, "though his real name was probably Julian, the Gothic Uldoin or perhaps Urban or Ulbán or Bulian."
[16] in [17][page needed] Indeed, historically Ceuta (then called "Septem") and the surrounding territories were the last area of Byzantine Africa to be occupied by the Arabs: around 708 AD, as Muslim armies approached the city, its Byzantine governor, Julian (described as "King of the Ghomara"), changed his allegiance and exhorted the Muslims to invade the Iberian Peninsula.
They destroyed Septem during the Kharijite rebellion led by Maysara al-Matghari in 740 AD, but Christian Berbers remained there (even if harshly persecuted in the next centuries).
Roderic had been appointed to the throne by the bishops of the Visigothic Catholic church, snubbing the sons of the previous king, Wittiza, who died or was killed in 710.
Thus, Wittiza's relatives and partisans fled Iberia for Julian's protection at Ceuta (Septem), the Pillar of Hercules in North Africa on the northern shore of the Maghreb.
What is unclear is whether Julian hoped to place a son of Wittiza on the throne and gain power and preference thereby or whether he was intentionally opening up Iberia to foreign conquest.
Musa was initially unsure of Julian's project and so, in July 710, directed Tarif ibn Malluk to lead a probe of the Iberian coast.
This occurred largely due to a reversal of fortune when the wings commanded by Roderic's relatives Sisbert and Osbert deserted or switched sides.
Afterwards, Julian was apparently granted the lands he was promised by the Muslims but, as the story goes, he lived on friendless and full of guilt for having become a traitor to his kingdom.
Julian and his putative daughter, Florinda la Cava, are the subject of numerous mediaeval chivalric romances poetry, with extant copies dating to the early modern period, shortly before Cervantes wrote his Don Quixote.
Despite having multiple variants, they tend to begin with the phrase "Amores trata Rodrigo..."[1][nb 7] In Part I, Chapter 41, of Don Quixote (1605), Miguel de Cervantes writes: The Jacobean playwright William Rowley recounts Julian's story in his play All's Lost by Lust (c. 1619).
The narrator in this novel, an exile in Morocco, rages against his beloved Spain, forming an obsessive identification with the fabled Count Julian, dreaming that, in a future invasion, the ethos and myths central to Hispanic identity will be totally destroyed.