The occupation of Menorca by the Muslims

At the end of the 7th century, the Muslims seized North Africa from Byzantium. The Balearic Islands are then left with no more defense than their own means and they soon succumb to the force of the Islamic expansion. The Arabs carried out frequent “razzias” against Menorca: they took captives, set fire to coastal estates and temporarily some population… This distressing situation lasted for two centuries.

The “Annales Regni Francorum” affirm that in 798 Charlemagne’s protection was requested from the Balearic Islands, who consequently ordered the repression of Arab piracy. But the inclusion of these islands in the Frankish Empire would be rather theoretical.

During the 9th century, the western Mediterranean appears to be affected by great insecurity. The ships of the county of Ampurias, those of Al-Andalus and those of the Normans interfered in their relations with the Balearic Islands. Abderramán II, around the year 849, directed a punitive expedition to these islands for having broken a pact by its inhabitants by attacking some Muslim ships anchored on its coasts. This fact, as well as the support previously given to the Empurias squadron, indicate that the Balearic Islands felt linked to the Christian powers in their struggles with the Islamists.

According to the chronicler Sebastián de Salamanca, in the year 859 the Normans attacked Mallorca, Menorca and Formentera, where they must have wreaked great havoc, leaving them very depopulated. The violent destruction of the Paleo-Christian basilicas was due (probably) to the Norman invasion and the state of depopulation and ruin in which the Balearic Islands were left explains why, according to a bull of the Roman Pope of the year 898, the churches of these islands appear under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Girona.

At the beginning of the 10th century (902-903), the Balearic Islands were conquered and incorporated into the Caliphate of Córdoba. In 1045, after the split of the Spanish Muslim state, they were incorporated into the Taifa kingdom of Denia and from 1087 they enjoyed independence. In 1114 an ephemeral joint invasion of the Pisans and Catalans took place, which managed to conquer this kingdom but provoked the intervention and domination of the Almoravids, who even, after being defeated in Al-Andalus, managed to remain in the Balearic Islands with the dynasty of the Ganiya, until finally in 1203 they were supplanted by the Almohades.