Indeed, 12 years later, when he had thrice rescued Gaul from Umayyad invasions, Antonio Santosuosso noted when he destroyed an Umayyad army sent to reinforce the invasion forces of the 735 campaigns, " Charles Martel again came to the rescue.

* 711 – Umayyad conquest of Hispania: Battle of Guadalete – Umayyad forces under Tariq ibn Ziyad defeat the Visigoths led by King Roderic.

The Arabs were Umayyad forces sent by Caliph Sulayman ibn Abd al-Malik and serving under his brother Maslamah ibn Abd al-Malik.

Leo secured the Empire's frontiers by inviting Slavic settlers into the depopulated districts and by restoring the army to efficiency ; when the Umayyad Caliphate renewed their invasions in 726 and 739, as part of the campaigns of Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik, the Arab forces were decisively beaten, particularly at Akroinon in 740.

* Battle of Avignon – The Frankish army under Charles Martel expels Umayyad forces from the city.

* Battle of Narbonne – The Frankish army under Charles Martel defeats the Umayyad forces but fails to retake the city.

* Battle of Nîmes – The Frankish army under Charles Martel expels Umayyad forces from the city and destroys it.

* Umayyad forces under Maslamah ibn Abd al-Malik sack the Byzantine city of Caesarea.

The battle pitted Frankish and Burgundian forces under Austrasian Mayor of the Palace Charles Martel, against an army of the Umayyad Caliphate led by ‘ Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi, Governor-General of al-Andalus.

Charles ' victory is widely believed to have stopped the northward advance of Umayyad forces from the Iberian peninsula, and to have preserved Christianity in Europe during a period when Muslim rule was overrunning the remains of the old Roman and Persian Empires.

Drawing on non-contemporary Muslim sources, Creasy describes the Umayyad forces as 80, 000 strong or more.

Writing in 1999, Paul K. Davis estimates the Umayyad forces at 80, 000 and the Franks at about 30, 000, while noting that modern historians have estimated the strength of the Umayyad army at Tours at between 20 – 80, 000.

The Umayyad forces were mostly infantry, and what cavalry they had never got a chance to mobilize and meet him in open battle.

At Bordeaux, and again at the Battle of the River Garonne, the Umayyad forces were cavalry, not infantry, and were not taken by surprise, and given a chance to mass for battle, which led to the devastation of Odo's army, almost all of whom were killed with minimal losses to the Muslims.

The next day, when the Umayyad forces did not renew the battle, the Franks feared an ambush.

Charles at first believed that the Umayyad forces were trying to lure him down the hill and into the open.

) Only after extensive reconnaissance of the Umayyad camp by Frankish soldiers — which by both historical accounts had been so hastily abandoned that even the tents remained, as the Umayyad forces headed back to Iberia with what loot remained that they could carry — was it discovered that the Muslims had retreated during the night.

Charles continued to drive the Umayyad forces from France in subsequent years.

Charles believed it was vital to confine the Umayyad forces to Iberia and deny them any foothold in Gaul.

In large part, this was the result of the schismatic forces that had undermined the Umayyad regime, which relied on the assertion of the superiority of Arab culture as part of its claim to legitimacy, and the Abbasids ' welcoming of support from non-Arab Muslims.

Among the Syrian junds were contingents of old Umayyad clients, numbering perhaps 500, and Abd al-Rahman believed he might tug on old loyalties and get them to receive him.

The emir Yusuf al-Fihri, had proven himself unable to keep the powerful al-Sumayl in check and several Yemenite chieftains felt their future prospects were poor, whether in a Fihrid or Syrian-dominated Spain, that they had a better chance of advancement if they hitched themselves to the glitter of the Umayyad name.

Although the Umayyads did not have a historical presence in the region ( no member of the Umayyad family was known to have ever set foot in al-Andalus before ) and there were grave concerns about young Abd al-Rahman's inexperience, several of the lower-ranking Yemenite commanders felt they had little to lose and much to gain, and agreed to support the prince.

By March 756, Abd al-Rahman and his growing following of Umayyad clients and Yemenite junds, were able to take Sevilla without violence.

In an attempt to demoralize Abd al-Rahman's troops, al-Fihri ensured that his troops not only were well fed, but also ate gluttonous amounts of food in full view of the Umayyad lines.

Zaragoza's famous white granite defensive walls were breached under a torrent of ordnance from the Umayyad lines.

In the agony of the Umayyad dynasty in the Al-Andalus ( Moorish Iberia ), two princes of the house were proclaimed Caliph of Cordoba for a very short time, Abd-ar-Rahman IV Mortada ( 1017 ), and Abd-ar-Rahman V Mostadir ( 1023 – 1024 ).

The rulers of Al-Andalus were granted the rank of Emir by the Umayyad Caliph Al-Walid I in Damascus.

After several wars including the Battle of Rajasthan, where the Hindu Rajput clans defeated the Umayyad Arabs, their expansion was checked and contained to Sindh in Pakistan, many short-lived Islamic kingdoms ( sultanates ) under foreign rulers were established across the north western subcontinent over a period of a few centuries.

So it was that the armies of the Frankish ruler and warlord Charles Martel, which defeated the Umayyad Arab invasion at the Battle of Tours in 732, were still largely infantry armies, the elites riding to battle but dismounting to fight, providing a hard core for the levy of the infantry warbands.

In Aleppo, for example, the largest and probably the oldest mosque library, the Sufiya, located at the city's Grand Umayyad Mosque, contained a large book collection of which 10, 000 volumes were reportedly bequeathed by the city's most famous ruler, Prince Sayf al-Dawla.

Arab-plan mosques were constructed mostly under the Umayyad and Abbasid dynasties ; subsequently, however, the simplicity of the Arab plan limited the opportunities for further development, the mosques consequently losing popularity.

The first minaret was constructed in 665 in Basra during the reign of the Umayyad caliph Muawiyah I. Muawiyah encouraged the construction of minarets, as they were supposed to bring mosques on par with Christian churches with their bell towers.

The initial Muslim conquests began in the 7th century after the death of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, and were marked by a century of rapid Arab expansion beyond the Arabian Peninsula under the Rashidun and Umayyad Caliphates.

In the late 7th and early 8th C., during the Umayyad Caliphate, conversions were often ignored and jizya continued being collected on Muslim converts, particularly if they were non-Arabs ( e. g. Berbers, Persians ), raising tensions throughout the caliphate.

After the Islamic Moorish conquest of nearly all of the Iberian Peninsula in 711-718 and the establishment of the emirate of Al-Andalus, an Umayyad were expedition suffered a major defeat at the Battle of Toulouse and were halted for a while on their way north.

Because the Umayyad rulers based in Córdoba were unable to extend their power into Frankish territory, they decided to consolidate their power within the Iberian peninsula.

During the time of the Almoravids and especially the Almohads some were treated badly, in contrast to the policies of the earlier Umayyad Caliphs and later Emirs.

The largest and best known theocracies in history were the Umayyad and early Abassid Caliphate, and the Papal States.

Both Oman and Yemen were part of the Persian Empire, and later of Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates.

The slaves were mostly captured by Venice from Dalmatia, the Holy Roman Empire from what is now Prussia and Poland, and the Byzantines from elsewhere in the Balkans, and were generally destined for other parts of the Byzantine Empire and ( most frequently ) the Muslim states surrounding the Mediterranean: the Abbasid Caliphate, the Umayyad Caliphate of Córdoba, the Emirate of Sicily, and the Fatimid Caliphate ( which relied on Slavs purchased at the Bari market for its legions of Sakalaba Mamluks ).