The Upper March (; Spanish: Marca Superior) was an administrative and military division in northeastern al-Andalus, roughly corresponding to the Ebro valley and adjacent Mediterranean coast, from the 8th century to the early 11th century. It was established as a march "frontier province" of the Umayyad state of Córdoba facing the Christian lands of the Carolingian Empire's Spanish March, the Asturo-Leonese marches of Castile and Álava, and the nascent autonomous Pyrenean principalities. In 1018, the decline of the central Cordoban state allowed the lords of the Upper March to establish the Taifa of Zaragoza in its place.
Formation of the Upper March In the half-century after the initial Muslim invasion of the Iberian Peninsula, much of the conquest and settlement was left to the local initiatives of clans and tribes in loose coalition rather than being a centrally coordinated scheme. As a result, the fertile lands of Septimania north of the Pyrenees were occupied and held until 759, but any occupation of the uninviting lands of Galicia and Asturias was temporary and superficial.Reilly, pp. 52–54
Much of the land in the conquered areas had been owned by Christian landowners that resisted the invasion: this was confiscated and granted to the Arab and Berber troops that had participated in the invasion, with the Arabs tending to settle in the south, leaving the more remote and relatively barren areas to the Berbers. However, those Christian nobles and communities that had submitted were granted treaties that allowed them to retain their lands upon the payment of a significant annual tax for as long as they remained Christian. The substantial advantages of conversion to Islam were supposed to have convinced Count Cassius, said to have been a count in the Ebro region in Visigoth times, and the reputed founder of the Banu Qasi, to convert in 714. What is certain is that the existence of the Banu Qasi was recorded from 789, in the person of supposed grandson, Musa ibn Musa al-Qasawi, and that the two most powerful local families in the Upper March in the late 8th and early 9th centuries, the Banu Qasi and the Banu Amrus were both native converts to Islam.Kennedy, p. 39
Further Muslim expansion ended through the combined effects of a Berber Revolt in Iberia that commenced in 740 and, in the Middle East, the overthrow of the Umayyad Caliphate in the Abbasid revolution of 747 to 750. The latter resulted in the creation of an Abbasid Caliphate that regarded al-Andalus as a rebel province needing to be recovered.Reilly, p.56 The Berber revolt led to the withdrawal of those Berbers who had been allocated land in the Duero valley, leaving few Muslims in the northwest of the peninsula. Alfonso I, the Christian ruler of neighboring Kingdom of Asturias, which spanned the northern coast of Iberia from Galicia to the Basque Country, raided the former Berber lands and captured the cities of León, Astorga and Braga, killing their Muslim garrisons. Taking their populations north, he left the Duero valley a sparsely populated no man's land bordering what would become the Upper March to the west.Reilly, p.75 Meanwhile, in the north and east, Francia had extended its power into Aquitaine and, under Pepin of Herstal, had moved into Septimania in the 750s, capturing Narbonne in 759,Reilly, p. 77 thus confining al-Andalus south of the Pyrenees.
There was also a civil war fought in al-Andalus between the families deriving from northern and southern Arabia, leading in 747 to the ascendance of the Yemeni faction following the battle of Secunda (Sequnda, near Córdoba) and the installation at Zaragoza of a Yemeni, al-Sumayl ibn Hatim al-Kilabi, as governor over the northern Arab settlers of the Ebro valley. Two of their leaders, Amir al-Abdari and Hubab al-Zuhri, rebelled and besieged Zaragoza in 754. This rebellion was put down the next year by the army of Yusuf ibn Abd al-Rahman al-Fihri, the governor of al-Andalus, and when a group of soldiers already suspected of being rebel sympathizers blocked him from executing the rebels, Yusuf sent them on a suicide mission against the Basques of Pamplona. These moves left southern Iberia exposed and enabled the fugitive Umayyad prince, Abd al-Rahman I, to cross from North Africa and gain a foothold, eventually leading to his conquest of al-Andalus and establishment of an independent Emirate of Córdoba.Manzano Moreno, pp. 185-187
The strength of Abd al-Rahman's Umayyad Emirate lay in the Guadalquivir valley and to its south and east south and, rather than trying to conquer Christian lands or make their rulers accept Umayyad primacy, he and his successors concentrated on keeping the outlying areas of the Emirate under their control by setting-up three marches or ṯuḡur, (singular ṯaḡr). In the west was the Lower March (aṯ-Ṯaḡr al-Adna) based at Mérida, a Middle March (aṯ-Ṯaḡr al-Awsaṭ) ruled from Toledo and later Medinaceli, while in the east the Upper March had Zaragoza as its seat.Cabañero Subiza, p. 75 Each march was responsible for defending its area against Christian attack and supporting any major expeditions the Emirate's principal armies might make against the Christian territories.
The Upper March consisted of several coras (territorial subdivisions, from the Arabic kura): Barbitaniya, stretching from the north of the present province of Huesca, with its capital in Barbastro,Cabañero Subiza, pp. 82 and also including Boltaña, Alquézar, Naval, Salinas de Hoz, Olvena, and near the boundary of Muslim control, Graus, called Puertaspan (Puerto de Hispania, 'Gateway to al-Andalus');Cabañero Subiza, pp. 79-81 Huesca (Washka), based in Huesca and including the fort of Bolea; Lleida, which included Mequinenza and Fraga; Zaragoza, both politically and economically the principal cora of the Upper March, centered on that city but also including Zuera, Ricla, Muel, Belchite, Alcañiz and Calanda; Calatayud, including its eponymous city as well as Maluenda and Daroca; Tudela, which included the cities of Tarazona and Borja and extended to the current La Rioja; and the smallest, Barusa, organized along the Piedra river, with its capital in Molina de Aragón, and bordering the cora of Santaveria, in the Middle March. The northernmost of these coras, Barbitaniya and Huesca, formed a subdivision of the Upper March called the Distant or Farthest March (aṯ-Ṯaḡr al-‘Aqṣā).
The Upper March was ruled by a Lord of the March (Sāhib aṯ-Ṯaḡr), named by the emir or caliph, who acted as civil governor (amil, wali) or military commander (qa'id), sometimes both. They in turn depended on the district governors, who were responsible for overseeing taxation, maintaining fortresses, defending their people, and accompanying the Córdoba emir or caliph on campaigns against the Christian states of the north.Cabañero Subiza, pp. 76
Failed Carolingian expansion The nobility of the Upper March remained fractious. In 774, Husayn of Zaragoza rebelled against Umayyad Córdoba, proclaiming for the Abbasids, and the Emir sent an army to subjugate the march. Then in 778, Sulayman ibn Yaqdhan al Arabi of Barcelona sent envoys to Charlemagne, offering his fealty along with that of Abu Taur of Huesca and Husayn of Zaragoza in exchange for his support in their rebellion against Córdoba. The Frankish monarch marched south and took Barcelona, but when he arrived at Zaragoza he found the marcher lords to have had a change of heart, and the city was closed to him. After an unsuccessful siege, Charlemagne withdrew through the Pyrenees, where his rear guard was ambushed at the Battle of Roncevaux Pass. This marked the end of significant Frankish attempts to expand into Iberia, and in 795 Charlemagne would establish the Marca Hispanica in the eastern Pyrenees to serve as a buffer between his realm and the Upper March, while the two realms continued to compete for influence in the western Pyrenees, among the Basques. At the end of the century, two governors of Huesca would again reach out to the Franks, the Muwallad Basque rebel Bahlul Ibn Marzuq in 798, and Azan in 799,Sénac (2020), p. 29 while in the latter year at Pamplona, Muhammad ibn Musa, apparently of Muwallad Banu Qasi family of Huesca, was assassinated in what usually is interpreted as a move by a pro-Frankish faction.Cañada Juste, p. However, in 816 a Christian army including Franks and Asturian allies and led by Velasco the Gascon was defeated by Emirate armies in 816. This defeat would lead to the ascendancy, originally as clients of Córdoba, of a native Basque dynasty allied by blood to the Muwallad lords of the Upper March as rulers of the nascent state of Pamplona.
Muwallad rivalry, ascendance and decline 8th and 9th centuries In 781, the emir succeeded in forcing the submission of Husayn in Zaragoza, who had murdered Sulayman in 780, but in 785 the latter's son, Matruh al-Arabi, rebelled and took Huesca and Zaragoza, before he in turn was murdered by his servants, the kinsmen Amrus ibn Yusuf and Shabrit ibn Rashid, in 791/2. The Emirate brought the loyalty of Amrus by granting him Toledo, but in 798 another Zaragoza rebel, Bahlul Ibn Marzuq, took Huesca from the Banu Salama, and this led to the return of Amrus from Toledo into the Upper March. Amrus expelled Bahlul and fortified Tudela. Another rebellion in Zaragoza, this time led by Furtun ibn Musa of the Banu Qasi, was likewise crushed by Amrus in 802, and he was then given control of Zaragoza and the Upper March.
The Upper March in the 9th century, based on Zaragoza, had other urban settlements at Tudela, Huesca, Tortosa and Calatayud. Al-Hakim I used the local Muwallad families, native Iberian that had converted to Islam, as governors. The decade-long governorship of Amrus bin Yusuf, from whom would descend the Banu Amrus clan, kept the Banu Qasi in check, though they retained their semi-autonomous status despite Amrus's occupation of Tudela, and their alliance and intermarriages with the kingdom of Pamplona also provided them with Basque soldiers.Kennedy, p.56
The capture and execution of Amrus, coupled with the ascendance of their Christian kinsmen in Pamplona, led to the ascendance of the Banu Qasi, and in 842, their leader Musa ibn Musa defied the Umayyads and rebelled against Córdoba with the assistance of his half-brother, Íñigo Arista of Pamplona. Despite the Umayyad capture of Zaragoza in 844 and a son of the Emir Abd-al Rahman II being appointed as governor until 852, Musa retained his autonomy in his ancestral lands.Kennedy, p.57 After reconciliation with the Emirate and further episodes of rebellion followed by punitive Umayyad expeditions directed by Abd el-Rahman II, in 852 the new emir, Muhammad, named Musa as Wāli of Zaragoza and governor of the Upper March He was sometimes called 'the Third King of Hispania', alongside the Emir of Córdoba and the King of Asturias, as he controlled Zaragoza, Tudela, Calatayud, Huesca and Toledo, forming a semi-independent state. However, his power in the Upper March was ended when he and his Basque allies suffered a crushing defeat against the combined armies of Asturias and Pamplona in 859 or 860 at the Battle of Monte Laturce. After fleeing the battle, in which he lost the bulk of his army, Musa was deprived by the emir of all his titles.Kennedy, pp.57-8 He died following an expedition against his son-in-law, Azraq ibn Mantel, at Guadalajara in August 862, during which he was wounded and left unable to ride. He died a month later at Tudela.Cañada Juste, p.39