Abd al-Rahman al-Ghafiqi

Abd al-Rahman al-Ghafiqi was the Umayyad governor of al-Andalus who led the raid into Francia that ended at Tours in 732, and he was killed there. He is not Abd al-Rahman I, the Umayyad prince who founded the emirate of Cordoba a generation later, and the two are constantly confused. He was an Arab of the Ghafiq, appointed governor twice, and by the standards of a post that changed hands roughly every two years he was well regarded: the chronicles credit him with restraining the abuses of his predecessors and with paying his troops properly. In 732 he took a large mounted force north through the western passes, destroyed Duke Odo of Aquitaine's army at the Garonne, and sacked Bordeaux. The expedition was a raid rather than a campaign of conquest, aimed at the shrine of Saint Martin at Tours, which was rich. Odo, beaten, went to Charles Martel, whom he had been fighting, and asked for help. The Franks met the column somewhere between Tours and Poitiers in October and did something Frankish infantry was not expected to do: they held a defensive square on wooded high ground for a day against cavalry, and did not break. Al-Ghafiqi was killed trying to hold his men together when part of the force turned back towards the baggage and its plunder. The army withdrew overnight. How decisive the battle was has been argued for three centuries - Gibbon made it the salvation of Christendom, and most historians now think an already overextended raid was going home anyway - but the Muslim advance north of the Pyrenees did stop, and Charles Martel's dynasty was made by it.

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