<P> The Chronicle of 754 stated that "the entire army of the Goths, which had come with him (Roderic) fraudulently and in rivalry out of hopes of the Kingship, fled". This is the only contemporary account of the battle and the paucity of detail led many later historians to invent their own . The location of the battle is not totally clear but was probably the Guadalete River . </P> <P> Roderic was believed to have been killed, and a crushing defeat would have left the Visigoths largely leaderless and disorganized, partly because the ruling Visigoth population is estimated to have been a mere 1 to 2% of the total population . While this isolation is said to have been "a reasonably strong and effective instrument of government"; it was highly "centralised to the extent that the defeat of the royal army left the entire land open to the invaders". The resulting power vacuum, which may have indeed caught Tariq completely by surprise, would have aided the Muslim conquest immensely . It may have been equally welcome to the Hispano - Roman peasants who were probably--as D.W. Lomax claims--disillusioned by the prominent legal, linguistic and social divide between them and the "barbaric" and "decadent" Visigoth royal family . </P> <P> In 714, Musa ibn Nusayr headed north - west up the Ebro river to overrun the western Basque regions and the Cantabrian mountains all the way to Gallaecia, with no relevant or attested opposition . During the period of the second (or first, depending on the sources) Arab governor Abd al - Aziz ibn Musa (714--716), the principal urban centres of Catalonia surrendered . In 714, his father, Musa ibn Nusair, advanced and overran Soria, the western Basque regions, Palencia, and as far west as Gijón or León, where a Berber governor was appointed with no recorded opposition . The northern areas of Iberia drew little attention to the conquerors and were hard to defend when taken . The high western and central sub-Pyrenean valleys remained unconquered . </P> <P> At this time, Umayyad troops reached Pamplona, and the Basque town submitted after a compromise was brokered with Arab commanders to respect the town and its inhabitants, a practice that was common in many towns of the Iberian Peninsula . The Umayyad troops met little resistance . Considering that era's communication capabilities, three years was a reasonable time spent almost reaching the Pyrenees, after making the necessary arrangements for the towns' submissions and their future governance . </P>

Who headed the muslim army that landed at gibraltar in 711