[10] In an event traditionally dated to 824, Íñigo Arista was elected or declared ruler of the area around Pamplona in opposition to Frankish expansion into the region, originally as vassal to the Córdoba emirate.

After the decline of the Western Roman Empire, the Vascones were slow to be incorporated into the Visigothic Kingdom, which was in a civil war that provided the opportunity for the Umayyad conquest of Hispania.

About 601, the Duchy of Vasconia (Latin: Wasconiae) was established by the Merovingians, based around Roman Novempopulania and extending from the southern branch of the River Garonne to the northern side of the Pyrenees.

In 778, Charlemagne was invited by rebellious Muslim lords on the Upper March of Al-Andalus to lead an expedition south with the intention of taking the city of Zaragoza from the Emirate of Córdoba.

The next mention of Pamplona is in 799, when Mutarrif ibn Musa, thought to have been a governor of the city and a member of the muwallad Banu Qasi family, was killed there by a pro-Frankish faction.

However, continued rebellion in Gascony rendered Frankish control south of the Pyrenees tenuous,[21] and the Emirate was able to reclaim the region following victory in the 816 Battle of Pancorbo, in which they defeated and killed the "enemy of Allah", Balask al-Yalaski (Velasco the Gascon), along with the uncle of Alfonso II of Asturias, Garcia ibn Lubb ('son of Lupus'), Sancho, the 'premier knight of Pamplona', and the pagan warrior Ṣaltān.

Louis's son Pepin, then King of Aquitaine, stamped out the Vasconic revolt in Gascony then hunted the chieftains who had taken refuge in southern Vasconia, i.e., Pamplona and Navarre, no longer controlled by the Franks.

He sent an army led by the counts Aeblus and Aznar Sanchez (the latter being appointed lord, but not duke, of Vasconia by Pepin after suppressing the uprising in the duchy), accomplishing their goals with no resistance in Pamplona (which still lacked walls after the 778 destruction).

The chronicles did distinguish between Navarre and its main town in 806 (In Hispania, vero Navarrensis et Pampelonensis), while the Annals of Fontenelle refers to "Induonis et Mitionis, ducum Navarrorum" (Induo [Íñigo Arista] and Mitio [perhaps Jimeno], dukes of the Navarrese).

The daughter of Sancho Garcés, Sancha, was married to the King of León Ordoño II, establishing an alliance with the Leónese kingdom and ensuring the Calahorra region.

García continued to rule under the tutelage of his mother, Sancho's widow Toda Aznarez, who also engineered several political marriages with the other Christian kingdoms and counties of northern Iberia.

The marriage of the Pamplonese King García Sánchez with Andregoto Galíndez, daughter of Galindo Aznárez II, Count of Aragon linked the eastern county to the kingdom.

In 934, he invited Abd-ar-Rahman III to intervene in the kingdom in order to emancipate himself from his mother, and this began a period of tributary status by Pamplona and frequent punitive campaigns from Córdoba.

The death of Almanzor in 1002 and his successor Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan in 1008 caused the decline of the Caliphate of Córdoba and the progress of the County of Castile south, while Pamplona, led by Sancho Garcés III, strengthen the position of his kingdom on the borderlands of the Taifa of Zaragoza, controlling the territories of Loarre, Funes, Sos, Uncastillo, Arlas, Caparroso and Boltaña.

In 1016 the County of Castile and the Kingdom of Navarre made a pact on their future expansion: Pamplona would expand towards the south and east, the eastern region of Soria and the Ebro valley, including territories that were at the time part of Zaragoza.

At its greatest extent the Kingdom of Navarre included all the modern Spanish province; the northern slope of the western Pyrenees the Spaniards called the ultra puertos ("country beyond the mountain passes") or French Navarre; the Basque provinces of Spain and France; the Bureba, the valley between the Basque mountains and the Montes de Oca to the north of Burgos; and the Rioja and Tarazona in the upper valley of the Ebro.

[52] Henry did not dare issue a verdict based entirely on the legal grounds as presented by both sides, instead deciding to refer them back to the boundaries held by both kingdoms at the start of their reigns in 1158, besides agreeing to a truce of seven years.

He appropriated the revenues of churches and convents, granting them instead important privileges; in 1198 he presented to the See of Pamplona his palaces and possessions there; this gift was confirmed by Pope Innocent III on 29 January 1199.

[55] Sancho the Strong would join in the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa (1212), where he added his small force to the Christian alliance that was victorious over the Caliph Muhammand An-Nasir.

He played an important part in the Hundred Years' War and in the French civil unrest of the time, and on account of his deceit and cruelty he received the epithet of 'the Bad'.

[58]: 252 The unhappy Prince Charles was defeated by his father at Aibar in 1451, and held prisoner for two years, during which he wrote his famous Chronicle of Navarre, a major source for the period.

[57]: 15  John II continued to rule as king up to 1479, when Queen Eleanor succeeded him for only 15 days and then died; she left the crown to her grandson, Francis Phoebus, but this inaugurated another period of instability.

In exchange, Alain made an array of painful concessions: Ferdinand received the count of Lerín's patrimony and gained control of important fortresses across Navarre, including the right to keep a garrison in Olite at the heart of the kingdom.

As a liberation army commanded by General Asparros approached Pamplona, the citizens rose in revolt and besieged the military governor, Iñigo de Loyola, in his newly built castle.

However, once the local, urban based enlightened bourgeois were suppressed by the Spanish authorities and bristled at despotic French rule during the occupation, the most staunchly Catholic rose to prominence in Navarre, coming under strong clerical influence.

[13] In 1833, Navarre and the whole Basque region in Spain became the chief stronghold of the Carlists, but in 1837 a Spanish Liberal, centralist constitution was proclaimed in Madrid, and Isabella II recognized as queen.

Its separate status was acknowledged on the Act promulgated in October that year, but after arrival of Baldomero Espartero and the anti-fueros Progressives to office in Madrid, talks with Navarrese Liberal negotiators led to a near-assimilation of Navarre with the Spanish province.

In exchange for giving up self-government, the Navarrese were compensated with the Compromise Act (Spanish: Ley Paccionada) in 1841, a set of tax, administrative and other prerogatives, conjuring an idea of 'compromise between two equal sides', and not a granted charter.

Following the 1839–1841 treaties, conflict with Madrid's central government over Navarre's agreed administrative and fiscal idiosyncrasies contributed to the Third Carlist War (1872–76), largely centred in the Basque districts.

As a reward for its support in the Spanish Civil War, Franco allowed Navarre, as it happened with Álava, to maintain some prerogatives reminiscent of the ancient Navarrese liberties.