Al-Andalus · a Light

Gibraltar is a rock named after a Berber commander

In 711 a force led by Tariq ibn Ziyad, a Berber commander in Umayyad service, crossed the strait from North Africa and landed at the great rock at its northern end. The Arabic name for the place became Jabal Tariq, the mountain of Tariq, and that is what Spanish and then English wore down into Gibraltar. Within a few years most of the Iberian peninsula was under Muslim rule, and it would remain so in part for nearly eight hundred years. Millions of people say the name of a seventh century North African officer every time they mention the strait, the rock, or the airport built on the isthmus below it.

Jabal Tariq · 711 CE