Septimania

[2] It referred to the western part of the Roman province of Gallia Narbonensis that passed to the control of the Visigoths in 462, when Septimania was ceded to their king, Theodoric II.

After the Frankish conquest of Narbonne in 759, the Muslim Arabs and Berbers were defeated by the Christian Franks and retreated to their Andalusian heartland after forty years of occupation, and the Carolingian king Pepin the Short came up reinforced.

[5][6] Septimania became a march of the Carolingian Empire and then West Francia down to the 13th century, though it was culturally and politically autonomous from the northern France-based central royal government.

This area was finally brought under effective control of the French kings in the early 13th century as a result of the Albigensian Crusade, after which it was assigned governors.

Septimania extended to a line halfway between the Mediterranean and the river Garonne in the northwest; in the east the Rhône separated it from Provence; and to the south its boundary was formed by the Pyrénées.

[3] In 462, the Empire, controlled by Ricimer in the name of Libius Severus, granted the Visigoths the western half of the province of Gallia Narbonensis in which to settle.

[7] The Franks allied with the Armorici, whose land was under constant threat from the Goths south of the Loire, and in 507 Clovis I, the Frankish king, invaded the Visigothic kingdom, whose capital lay in Toulouse, with the consent of the leading men of the tribe.

[8] Clovis defeated the Goths in the Battle of Vouillé and the child-king Amalaric was carried for safety into Iberia while Gesalec was elected to replace him and rule from Narbonne.

The attempt to take Carcassonne, a fortified site guarding the Septimanian coast, was defeated by the Ostrogoths (508) and Septimania thereafter remained in Visigothic hands, though the Burgundians managed to hold Narbonne for a time and drive Gesalec into exile.

The Franks however, did not try to hold the province and under Amalaric's successor, the centre of gravity of the kingdom crossed the Pyrenees and Theudis made his capital in Barcelona.

[12] However, Guntram was not motivated solely by religious alliance with the fellow Catholic Hermenegild, for he invaded Septimania again in 589 and was roundly defeated near Carcassonne by Claudius, Duke of Lusitania.

"[15] Thanks to the preserved canons of the Council of Narbonne of 590, a good deal can be known about surviving Gothic Pagan beliefs and practices in Visigothic Septimania.

[19] However, a series of Germanic sarcophagi of a unique regional style, variously labelled Visigothic, Aquitainian, or southwestern Gallic, are prevalent on both sides of the Septimanian border.

[25] The Arab and Berber Muslim forces under al-Samh ibn Malik al-Khawlani, wāli (governor-general) of al-Andalus, sweeping up the Iberian peninsula, by 719 had invaded the region of Septimania and deposed the local Visigothic Kingdom in 720.

[26] Following the Islamic invasion, al-Andalus was divided into five administrative areas, roughly corresponding to present-day Andalusia, Galicia, Lusitania, Castile and Léon, Aragon, and Catalonia, and the ancient province of Septimania.

[citation needed] By 721, al-Samh was reinforced and ready to lay siege to Toulouse, a possession that would open up the bordering region of Aquitaine to him on the same terms as Septimania.

[28] Arab and Berber Muslim forces, soundly based in Narbonne and easily resupplied by sea, struck in the 720s, conquering Carcassonne on the north-western fringes of Septimania (725).

After capturing Bordeaux on the wake of Duke Hunald's detachment attempt, the Carolingian king Charles Martel directed his attention to Septimania and Provence.

[29] While his reasons for leading a military expedition south remain unclear, it seems that he wanted to seal his newly secured grip on Burgundy,[29] now threatened by Umayyad occupation of several cities lying in the lower Rhône, or maybe it provided the excuse he needed to intervene in this territory ruled by Visigothic and Roman law, far off from the Frankish centre in the north of Gaul.

[6] Yusuf ibn 'Abd al-Rahman al-Fihri, wali of al-Andalus, had to quash a rebellion in Zaragoza in 756, and immediately head south to fight Abd ar-Rahman I, who defeated him.

[36] Narbonne capitulated to the Franks in 759 only after Pepin promised the defenders of the city to uphold the Visigothic law, and the county was granted to Miló, the Gothic count in Muslim times, thus earning the loyalty of Septimanian Goths against Duke Waifer, the independent ruler (princeps) of Aquitaine.

[5][6] After the Frankish conquest of Narbonne in 759, the Muslim Arabs and Berbers were defeated by the Christian Franks and expelled to their Andalusian heartland after 40 years of occupation, and the Carolingian king Pepin the Short came up reinforced.

[5][6] The Iberian Christian counter-offensive known as the Reconquista began in the early 8th century, when Andalusian Muslim forces managed to temporarily push into Aquitaine.

The Frankish king found Septimania and the borderlands so devastated and depopulated by warfare, with the inhabitants hiding among the mountains, that he made grants of land that were some of the earliest identifiable fiefs to Visigothic and other refugees.

His appointment as Count of Barcelona in 826 occasioned a general uprising of the Catalan lords (Bellonids) at this intrusion of Frankish power over the lands of Gothia.

For suppressing Berenguer of Toulouse and the Catalans, Louis the Pious rewarded Bernat with a series of counties, which roughly delimit 9th century Septimania: Narbonne, Béziers, Agde, Magalona, Nîmes and Uzés.

This fragmentation in small feudal entities and the resulting fading and the gradual shifting of the name Gothia are the most probable origins of the ancient geographical area known as Gathalania or Cathalania which has reached our days as the present region of Catalonia.