<P> Although a Christian and pagan Berber rebellion pushed out the Arabs temporarily, the Romanized urban population preferred the Arabs to the Berbers and welcomed a renewed and final conquest that left North Africa in Muslim hands by 698 . Over the next decades, the Berber and urban populations of North Africa gradually converted to Islam, although for separate reasons . The Arabic language was also adopted . Initially, the Arabs required only vassalage from the local inhabitants rather than assimilation, a process which took a considerable time . The groups that inhabited the Maghreb following this process became known collectively as Moors . Although the Berbers would later expel the Arabs from the Maghreb and form temporarily independent states, that effort failed to dislodge the usage of the collective term . </P> <P> In 711 the Islamic Moors of Arab and Berber descent in North Africa crossed the Strait of Gibraltar onto the Iberian Peninsula, and in a series of raids they conquered Visigothic Christian Hispania . Their general, Tariq ibn Ziyad, brought most of Iberia under Islamic rule in an eight - year campaign . They continued northeast across the Pyrenees Mountains but were defeated by the Franks under Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours in 732 . </P> <P> The Maghreb fell into a civil war in 739 that lasted until 743 known as the Berber Revolt . The Berbers revolted against the Umayyads, putting an end to Eastern dominion over the Maghreb . Despite racial tensions, Arabs and Berbers intermarried frequently . A few years later, the Eastern branch of the Umayyad dynasty was dethroned by the Abbasids and the Umayyad Caliphate overthrown in the Abbasid revolution (746 - 750). Abd al - Rahman I, who was of Arab - Berber lineage, managed to evade the Abbasids and flee to the Maghreb and then Iberia, where he founded the Emirate of Córdoba and the Andalusian branch of the Umayyad dynasty . The Moors ruled North Africa and Al - Andalus for several centuries thereafter . Ibn Hazm, the polymath, mentions that many of the Caliphs in the Umayyad Caliphate and the Caliphate of Córdoba were blond and had light eyes . Ibn Hazm mentions that he preferred blondes, and notes that there was much interest in blondes in al - Andalus amongst the rulers and regular Muslims: </P> <P> All the Caliphs of the Banu Marwan (God have mercy on their souls!), and especially the sons of al - Nasir, were without variation or exception disposed by nature to prefer blondes . I have myself seen them, and known others who had seen their forebears, from the days of al - Nasir's reign down to the present day; every one of them has been fair - haired, taking after their mothers, so that this has become a hereditary trait with them; all but Sulaiman al - Zafir (God have mercy on him!), whom I remember to have had black ringlets and a black beard . As for al - Nasir and al - Hakam al - Mustansir (may God be pleased with them!), I have been informed by my late father, the vizier, as well as by others, that both of them were blond and blue - eyed . The same is true of Hisham al - Mu'aiyad, Muhammad al - Mahdi, and ` Abd al - Rahman al - Murtada (may God be merciful to them all!); I saw them myself many times, and had the honour of being received by them, and I remarked that they all had fair hair and blue eyes . </P>

The term for the king in the muslim world