After 732, the Franks asserted their authority in Aquitaine and Burgundy, but only in 759 did they manage to take the Mediterranean region of Septimania, due to Muslim neglect and local Visigothic disaffection.

By 716, under the pressure of the Umayyad Caliphate from the south, the Kingdom of the Visigoths had been rapidly reduced to the province of Narbonensis (Septimania), a region which corresponds approximately to the modern Languedoc-Roussillon.

[2][3] Late Muslims sources, such as Ahmad al-Maqqari, describe Musa ibn Nusayr (712–714) as leading an expedition to the Rhône at the far east of the Visigothic kingdom, but these are not reliable.

The Visigothic rump state in Septimania surrendered to the Muslims on generally favourable terms, allowing the Umayyads to rule the region with the conditional support of the Gothic nobles.

In 725, his successor, Anbasa ibn Suhaym al-Kalbi, besieged the city of Carcassonne, which had to agree to cede half of its territory, pay tribute, and make an offensive and defensive alliance with Muslim forces.

In the 720s the savage fighting, the massacres and destruction particularly affecting the Ebro valley and Septimania unleashed a flow of refugees who mainly found shelter in southern Aquitaine across the Pyrenees, and Provence.

The new Umayyad governor in Cordova, Abd al-Rahman al-Ghafiqi, mustered an expedition to punish the Berber commander's insubordination, surrounding and putting him to death in Cerdanya, according to the Mozarabic Chronicle, a just retribution for killing the Gothic bishop.

Emboldened by his success, he attacked Uthman ibn Naissa's Aquitanian ally Duke Odo, who had just encountered Charles Martel's devastating offensive on Bourges and northern Aquitaine (731).

Still managing to recruit the necessary number of soldiers, the independent Odo confronted al-Ghafiqi's forces that had broken north by the western Pyrenees, but could not hold back the Arab commander's thrust against Bordeaux.

With the death of Odo in 735 and after putting down the Aquitanian detachment attempt led by duke Hunald, Charles Martel went on to deal with Burgundy (734, 736) and the Mediterranean south of Gaul (736, 737).

The patrician of Provence had called Andalusi forces in to protect his strongholds from the Carolingian thrust, maybe estimating his own garrisons too weak to fend off Charles Martel's well-organised, strong army made up of vassi enriched with Church lands.

Muslims maintained their authority over Septimania for another 15 years, but shifted the focus of their efforts towards the internal divisions within al-Andalus, that had been caused by the collapse of the Umayyad Caliphate in 750.

Arabic words were borrowed, such as tordjman (translator) which became drogoman in Provençal, and is still in use in the expression "par le truchement de"; charaha (to discuss), which became "charabia".