Fraxinetum
They withstood several attempts to oust them, but were finally defeated by the combined forces of the Provençal and Piedmontese nobility at the battle of Tourtour in 972.
The bishop also mentions Fraxinetum in his Liber de rebus gestis Ottonis, an account of the reign of King Otto I of Germany.
[1] Other contemporary narrative sources in Latin are the Annales of Flodoard, which cover the years 919–966, and the Casus sancti Galli of Ekkehard (d. 973).
Documentary sources are few, but the first cartulary of the Abbey of Saint-Victor at Marseille, covering the years 838–1000, contains some references in its charters to Fraxinetum.
The Vita Iohannis Gorziensis, a biography of John of Gorze written around 960, contains an account of the diplomacy undertaken by Otto I in response to raids in his territory.
[2] The anonymous Vita sancti Bobonis, written in the first half of the eleventh century about a saint who died in 986, describes the downfall of Fraxinetum.
[3] Among contemporary Muslim sources that mention Fraxinetum are the Arabic Ṣurāt al-Arḍ of Ibn Ḥawqal (977), which is a revised version of the geographical treatise Kitāb al-Masālik waʿl-mamālik by al-Iṣṭakhrī (951), and an anonymous Persian geography, Ḥudūd al-ʿĀlam (late 10th century).
[4] The fort of Fraxinetum atop the hill Mont des Maures[5] overlooking what is today the village of La Garde-Freinet had existed since the Roman era.
The Muslim geographers al-Iṣṭakhrī and Ibn Ḥawqal call Fraxinetum Jabal al-Qilāl ("mount of timber").
[7] The Muslims of Fraxinetum are described by Liudprand as Saracens (saraceni) from Spain and by the Vita sancti Bobonis simply as Spaniards (hispanicolae).
[9] In 838, the Annales Bertiniani record that Muslims raided Marseille, plundered its religious houses and took captive both men and women, clerical and lay, as slaves.
[10] The construction of a castle in the Camargue following these raids up the Rhône may have induced raiders to try points further east, culminating in the establishment of a permanent base of operations at Fraxinetum.
[11] The Muslim occupation of Fraxinetum began around 887, according to Liudprand, when a small ship carrying about twenty Andalusī sailors landed near Saint-Tropez.
While he attacked Fraxinetum by land, a fleet of Byzantine chelandia destroyed the Muslim ships with Greek fire.
[17] At the moment when Fraxinetum on the cusp of surrender, Hugh received news that a rival for the Italian throne, Margrave Berengar of Ivrea, was preparing to invade Italy with an army of Saxons from his exile in Germany.
[21] In 956, a raid into the Upper Rhine Valley prompted Otto I to send an embassy to the Umayyad court, which he clearly believed had the power to control Fraxinetum.
Christians retained their religion and towns their self-government through agreeing to the dhimma (the pact of submission) and paying the jizya (a head tax).
