Why go
This period connects the Balearics to changing powers across the western Mediterranean. It explains why Islamic Mallorca later became a strategic base, and why a simple handover date misses centuries of raids, negotiated submission and local rule. The story is especially useful alongside the later accounts of the 1115 crusade and Christian conquests.
The full story
Vandal forces brought the islands into their North African kingdom in the fifth century. Troops of the Byzantine emperor Justinian restored imperial control in 533 or 534. As Byzantine power weakened in the western Mediterranean, the islands occupied an uncertain position between competing states. In 707, they submitted to an Umayyad fleet under terms that the account says preserved local religion, traditions and considerable autonomy. The account also describes a Viking raid associated with Björn Ironside and Hastein in the ninth century. In 902, the Emirate of Córdoba took firmer control of the islands. When Córdoba fractured into smaller Muslim states called taifas, the ruler of Dénia, Mujahid al-Siqlabi, seized the islands in 1015 and used them for expeditions in the Mediterranean. In 1050, the island governor Abd Allah ibn Aglab rebelled and established an independent Taifa of Mallorca. A brief parallel account gives slightly different dates for the Vandal and Cordoban transitions; the broad sequence matters more here than a single disputed year.