Erwig

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Erwig (or Ervigio, also known as Euric II) was a king of the Visigoths in Hispania (680–687 CE). His reign began when he deposed King Wamba during a civil war. Although, Wamba had been a target of Jewish uprisings in the past, Erwig's natural allies were seen as equally threatening to his own rule. Despite the fact that Jewish power in the kingdom had been heavily damaged in the preceding civil war, Erwig continued to distrust them and used an attempted assassination of a royal bishop by a Jewish terrorist as pretext for outlawing the remaining Jewish nation.

Declaring them a plague on the kingdom, he called for their total removal from the kingdom. Such a decree had been issued by Erwig's predecessor Wamba and much as that one Erwig's also failed. Despite a number of campaigns which included sieges, communitarian violence, and outright battles, the Jewish community resisted all attempts at their expulsion. So in 681 he issued another decree, this time requiring that all Jews become Christians or leave the kingdom. Jews were officially discriminated against from henceforth as the monarchy attempted to restrict Jewish commercial activities. In response, the Jewish community increasingly allied itself with the growing Saracen power to the south and helped the Islamic raiders in return for their protection from Visigothic power.

Ruling a mulit-ethnic nation with a substantially powerfull and perrenially disloyal population of Jews and Ibero-Romans, the Visigothic power couldn't maintain its grip when faced with the advancing Islamic armies. Finally, the political tumult caused from ruling such a balkanized kingdom resulted in tremendous strife and civil conflict from within the Visigothic nation itself. From King Erwig's reign on, the Kingdom of the Visigoths would be torn by civil strife, ending in the Umayyad conquest of Hispania beginning in 711.

Indeed, in North Africa, Muslims who had invaded the Maghrib in 670 had, under the leadership of Musa ibn Nusair, defeated the Byzantines in what is today Morocco by 682. Muslims had also been making raids on the coasts of Iberia since at least the reign of Wamba. Thus the Muslims were already beginning to press southern Hispania.