Battle of Guadalete - Date and Place

Date and Place

The date of the battle is traditionally 711, though this is not the date given by the Chronicle of 754. The Chronicle dates it to 712 and places it before the conquest of Toledo, which it attributes to Mūsā in 711. If this discrepancy is solved by preferring the chronicler's order to his dating, then the battle occurred in 712 and the fall of Toledo later that same year. Later Arabic accounts give an exact date of 25 or 26 July. A more rough dating is between 19 and 23 July. According to David Levering Lewis, the battle took place on 19 July 711. Preceding the battle was an entire week of inconclusive skirmishes near the lake La Janda, in the plain stretching from the Río Barbate to the Río Guadalete.

According to ʻAbd al-Ḥakam, Ṭāriq was marching from Cartagena to Córdoba—after defeating a Gothic army that tried to stop him—when he met Roderic in battle near Shedunya, probably modern Medina Sidonia. The later Arab accounts, most of them generating from al-Ḥakam's, also place the battle near Medina Sidonia, "near the lake" or Wadilakka (river Lakka), often identified as the Guadalete river, La Janda lake, stream of "Beca", or the Barbate river (that is, their associated valleys). The earliest Christian source, and the nearest source in time to the events, says that it took place near the unidentified "Transductine promontories" (Transductinis promonturiis). Thomas Hodgkin, probably following Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada, placed the battle at Jerez de la Frontera. Joaquín Vallvé, studying toponymy, puts the engagement on the banks of the Guadarranque, which he says might derive from Wad al-Rinq (Roderic's river).