When Tarik heard the old woman’s reasoning, he immediately laid his shoulder bare, and the mark being found, as predicted, upon the left one, both he and his companions were filled with delight at the good omen.

Ibnu Hayyan’s account does not materially differ from those of the historians from whom we have quoted.  He agrees in saying that Ilyan, lord of Ceuta, incited Musa Ibn Nosseyr to make the conquest of Andalusia; and that this he did out of revenge, and moved by the personal enmity and hatred he had conceived against Roderic.  He makes Tarik’s army amount only to seven thousand, mostly Berbers, which, he says, crossed in four vessels provided by Ilyan.  According to his account, Tarik landed on a Saturday, in the month of Shaban, of the year 92, and the vessels that brought him and his men on shore were immediately sent back to Africa, and never ceased going backward and forward until the whole of the army was safely landed on the shores of Andalusia.

On the other side, Ibnu Khaldun reckons the army under the orders of Tarik at three hundred Arabs and ten thousand Berbers.  He says that before starting on his expedition, Tarik divided his army into two corps, he himself taking the command of one, and placing the other under the immediate orders of Tarif An-najai.  Tarik, with his men, landed at the foot of the rock now called Jebalu-l-fatah, “the mountain of the entrance,” and which then received his name, and was called Jebal-Tarik, “the mountain of Tarik”; while his companion, Tarif, landed on the island afterward called after him Jezirah-Tarif, “the island of Tarif.”  In order to provide for the security of their respective armies, both generals selected, soon after their landing, a good encampment, which they surrounded with walls and trenches, for no sooner had the news of their landing spread than the armies of the Goths began to march against them from all quarters.

No sooner did Tarik set his foot in Andalusia than he was attacked by a Goth named Tudmir (Theodomir), to whom Roderic had intrusted the defence of that frontier.  Theodomir, who is the same general who afterward gave his name to a province of Andalusia, called Belad Tudmir, “the country of Theodomir,” having tried, although in vain, to stop the impetuous career of Tarik’s men, despatched immediately a messenger to his master, apprising him how Tarik and his followers had landed in Andalusia.  He also wrote him a letter thus conceived:  “This our land has been invaded by people whose name, country, and origin are unknown to me.  I cannot even tell whence they came—­whether they fell from the skies or sprang from the earth.”