Toledo

Toledo is a city in al-Andalus on the river Tagus, and was the capital of the Goths. According to al-Baladhuri, Tariq ibn Ziyad conquered it and found a great table, which Musa ibn Nusayr gifted to al-Walid ibn Abd al-Malik in Damascus in the year 96 AH. ^{2 3}

It remained in Muslim hands until it fell in the year 478 AH, and then became a centre of translation from Arabic. ⁴ An additional source is needed.

Al-Maqqari relates from Ibn Khallikan a tale in circulation: the kings of the Greeks agreed to place talismans in a marble coffin inside a house in Toledo, and every king added a lock at its door, until there were twenty-six locks. When Ludhriq (Roderic), who was the twenty-seventh, became king, he opened the house and found in it only a scroll and pictures of turbaned horsemen wearing swords, in the forms of Arabs. ³

In the scroll it is written that whoever opened this house, the pictured people would enter the island of al-Andalus, and the king of its people would be taken from their hands. Shortly afterwards, Roderic heard of the arrival of an army from the East to conquer al-Andalus. ³ This is a tale which al-Maqqari relays; the accuracy of its events needs an additional source.

The city lies in al-Andalus. ²