Hungarian raid in Spain (942)

[3] According to Ibn Ḥayyān, the Hungarian raiding party passed through the Kingdom of the Lombards (northern Italy) and then through southern France, skirmishing along the way.

Their dwelling places are on the Danube River and they are nomads as the Arabs without towns and houses living in felt tents in scattered halting-places ...[a][b] proceeding from the Frankish country, after defeating whomever they found during their passage, attaining the height before Lérida, at the extreme end of the March, on Thursday, ten nights remaining in the month of sawwal; the advances of their cavalry put them in the plain of the valley of Ena, Cerratania and the city of Huesca; and on Saturday, the third day of their encampment, they made captive Yaḥyā ibn Muḥammad ibn aṭ-Ṭawīl, lord of Barbastro.

[c] Ibn Ḥayyān also names seven Hungarian "leaders"—the word amīr being a generic term for a ruler or governor: "They possessed seven chieftains.

[6] The information about the location of Hungary, its leaders and the route of the invading army may have come from five captured Hungarians who, according to Ibn Ḥayyān, converted to Islam and were incorporated into the caliphal guard.

According to Ibn Ḥayyān, it was the news of the raids and the fear they spread among Muslims that inspired King Ramiro II of León to repudiate the treaty he had made with the caliph the year before (941):[12] When the enemy of God, Ramiro Ordóñez, learned of the appearance of the Turks in the march of Lérida and of the fear of the Muslims of that region, he endeavoured to profit—violating the promises that he had solemnly sworn before the bishops and monks, [thus] limiting the pretexts he could have before the dignitaries of his own religion—by sending the lord of Castile [Qaštlīya], Fernán González [Ibn Gundišalb], with a trained army in support of his son-in-law, García Sánchez, lord of Pamplona, in the war against the Muslims.

[g] In fact, Count Fernán González, who commanded the border region of Castile, was cooperating with King García Sánchez I of Pamplona in the latter's war with the Caliphate as early as April, months before the Hungarians' arrival.

[12] Sometime between 939 and 943, Ermengol, the eldest son of Sunyer, Count of Barcelona, "died in battle at Baltarga childless" (apud Baltargam bello interfectus sine filio) according to the 12th-century Gesta Comitum Barchinonensium.