THE RISE OF MOHAMMEDANISM 179 rock named after him Gibraltar (Gebel Tarik), and, before the year was out, had defeated King Roderick and over- run half of Spain. Many fortified towns still held out, how- ever. Musa now arrived with reinforcements, compelled the towns to capitulate, won another great victory in 713, and proclaimed the rule of the caliph in the Gothic capi- tal, Toledo. In the mountains along the northern coast of Spain, however, Christian communities succeeded in main- taining their independence. After their rapid and easy conquest of most of the Span- ish peninsula, the Arabs and Berbers saw no reason why they should not press on farther. They began to Arabs cross the Pyrenees just about as a great attack checked by was being made upon Constantinople by their co-religionists in the East. By 720, they had occupied Septi- mania or Narbonne, the territory which the Visigoths had still held beyond the Pyrenees. Aquitaine, which the Goths had lost to Clovis at the end of the fifth century, was at present under the rule of an independent duke, Eudes, who only nominally recognized the Frankish kings of Neustria and Austrasia and their vigorous representative, Charles Martel, mayor of the palace. Eudes unaided for a time held the Moslems in check, but in 732 they prepared a great ex- pedition which defeated him and forced him to appeal to Charles Martel for aid. To-day one taking an express train from Bordeaux to Paris passes through the towns of Poitiers and Tours. This was the route the Moslems took. Between Poitiers and Tours they were met by the Franks under Charles Martel and decisively defeated. A few years later he also prevented them from entering the Rhone Valley; but, although he devastated Septimania, it was not until 769 that his son Pepin finally drove the Moslems south of the Pyrenees. In such wise the warlike Franks, with their superior physique, set a limit to the westward expansion of Islam, just as in eastern Europe Constantinople was a bar- rier which they could not break down. As the Huns, operat- ing from the east and north, had failed to take Constanti- nople or to penetrate to the heart of Gaul, so the Arabs,
