Archaeologists working in southeastern Spain have uncovered evidence that challenges long-held assumptions about the early centuries of Muslim rule on the Iberian Peninsula. Excavations at Cerro de la Virgen in Calasparra, Murcia, have brought to light an early Christian church that not only survived the Muslim conquest of 713 but remained in use for almost two more centuries.
The study, published in the journal Salduie by researchers David Martínez and Rubén Fernández, documents a church founded around the first half of the 5th century that preserved its religious function at least until the 9th century. If fully confirmed, this would represent one of the strongest pieces of evidence for the continuity of Christian worship in the peninsula during the first decades of Moorish occupation.
A church that outlasted conquest
The church was identified through prospecting and excavation campaigns carried out since 2021. Archaeologists describe it as a single-nave building with a tripartite chancel, a layout characteristic of certain late antique churches. The authors note parallels with Visigothic churches such as Santa Cristina de Lena in Asturias, and point out that the sacristies and apses show similarities with parochial and episcopal churches in Syria—a reflection of shared architectural models across the late antique Mediterranean.
Radiocarbon dating places the building's construction between 410 and 440 AD, supported by ceramic and stratigraphic analyses. The site had already drawn attention in earlier campaigns when a striking early Christian bronze lamp shaped like a eucharistic dove was unearthed, considered an exceptional piece in the European context.
But the most significant finding is not the church's age—it is its survival as a Christian place of worship after the Muslim conquest. Traditional historical accounts have often presented the arrival of Moorish troops in the early 8th century as a sharp break with Visigothic traditions. The Calasparra finds, however, paint a more complex picture.
The researchers argue there is no evidence the church was converted into a mosque or immediately lost its religious function. They state that the presence of containers and cooking pottery should not be interpreted as proof of desacralisation or conversion into Islamic dwellings. Instead, such materials indicate continued use of the space for community practices encompassing both worship and resource management. The central conclusion: the typological and stratigraphic study of the ceramics points to the liturgical character of the church enduring well into the 9th century.
Coexistence under the kūra of Tudmīr
The research places this phenomenon in the context of the kūra of Tudmīr, the administrative entity that emerged after the pact signed in 713 between Muslim authorities and the Visigothic nobleman Theodemir. That agreement allowed numerous Christian communities to retain part of their political, religious and economic structures in exchange for paying taxes.
Taxation is key to understanding the site. Among the materials recovered are scales, weights and other objects linked to economic control and tax collection. One weight bears an Arabic inscription that translates as "justice belongs to God." The presence of these objects shows that Cerro de la Virgen played a role beyond the strictly religious. Its strategic position, dominating important communication routes and local agricultural resources, turned it into a centre of territorial and economic organisation. The Christian community that used the church also took part in the fiscal mechanisms of the new Andalusi power.
The authors sum up: "The hill was a Christian community subjected to the taxes of the Islamic state and obliged to integrate into regional fiscal and commercial circuits."
For the researchers, the case of Calasparra sheds light on how the islamisation of peninsular society took place. Far from an immediate replacement of populations or institutions, the process was marked by decades of adaptation, coexistence and gradual transformation. The Christian population gradually found itself caught between two converging dynamics: the growing capacity of the Andalusi state to reorder the territory and ensure fiscal extraction, and the fact that islamisation also operated as a pathway to social and legal accommodation.
The study concludes that the disappearance of these Christian communities did not necessarily stem from destruction or expulsion at the hands of the Moors, but from a slow process of integration into the new Andalusi society. "The ecclesiastical hierarchy proved unable to sustain the favourable agreements reached at the time of the conquest, while the increasing centralisation and efficiency of fiscal structures and the urban pull of Córdoba eroded the productive base of churches, monasteries and Christian elites," Martínez and Fernández write.
More than 13 centuries later, the ruins of Cerro de la Virgen offer a new window onto one of the most decisive periods in the history of the Iberian Peninsula. They suggest that the transition between the Visigothic world and Al-Andalus was, at least in some regions, far more gradual, negotiated and complex than previously understood. This discovery adds nuance to ongoing debates about the nature of medieval coexistence in Spain, a topic that continues to resonate in contemporary discussions about the country's cultural identity and its place in Europe.
