The conquest of the Americas represented a foundational story for Spain, and Europe more broadly, as the world-dominating forces of the modern era. Looking at one of the great episodes of that story, linguist and historian Mohamed Abdelrahman Hassan finds that it leans heavily on a much earlier tale of conquest—the eighth-century Umayyad Caliphate’s defeat of the Visigothic Kingdom of Spain establishing Andalusia.

When Spanish forces began arriving in the Americas in large numbers in the early sixteenth century, Hassan writes, Muslim communities in southern Spain, and the Ottoman Empire in the broader region, were very much forces to be reckoned with. So perhaps it’s not surprising that the early accounts of the defeat of the Aztecs—from Hernán Cortés’s letters, the writings of his soldier Bernal Diaz, and the earliest histories of the events by written by sixteenth-century historians—echo the story of the earlier Muslim victory in striking ways.

In one often retold story, Cortés’s soldiers, finding him acting against orders from his commander, the Spanish ruler of Cuba, threatened to rebel and return to that island. In response, by the accounts of Diaz and Cortés himself, the conquistador sank the ships that had brought them to Mexico. Afterward, Diaz wrote, Cortés told the troops “we could look for no help or assistance except from God… Therefore we must rely on our own good swords and stout hearts.” Later, Spanish historians modified the story to say that Cortés had burned the ships.

The story directly echoes Arabic texts that describe how Umayyad commander Tariq Ibn Ziyad acted against the orders of the governor of Morocco, leading some of his soldiers to demand that they be allowed to return home. In response, Tariq burned his fleet and told the troops that they must unite and defeat the Visigoths or die.

“The story in the Spanish and Arabic texts perfectly correlates (rebellion, ship burning, a speech, and the soldiers uniting behind their commander),” Hassan writes.

Other parts of the received story of Cortés also mirror Arabic texts. In both cases, the conquerors sneakily convinced the local rulers that they did not intend to seize their land, instead promising to help them fight off an oppressive ruler in exchange for spoils of war. In both cases, the invaders found, hidden in a large room behind a hidden door, a stunning quantity of treasures representing the wealth of generations of kings. Both the Mexican king Cuauhtémoc and the Visigoth king Rodrigo unwisely appeared in full regalia, allowing the enemy to recognize and defeat him. And, after that happened, in both cases there was a dispute between the soldier who captured the king and his direct commander over who deserved the glory for the victory.

“The Arab historical knowledge that developed in Andalusia, especially that which dealt with the conquest event, formed the basis for the Spanish historical imagination that shaped the story of the conquest of America,” Hassan concludes.

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