The Vallée du Rhône (French pronunciation: [vale dy ʁon]; Occitan: Vall del Ròne) of Rhône Valley is a region located on either side of the Rhône, downstream from Lyon, in the south-east of France. The city of Valence in Drôme is considered the heart of the valley.
The Umayyad invasion of Gaul followed the Umayyad conquest of the Iberian peninsula (711–718). The Umayyad invasion occurred in two main phases, from AD 719 and from 732. Although the Umayyads secured control of Septimania, their incursions beyond this region into the Loire and Rhône valleys failed. In 759, Muslim forces lost Septimania to the Christian Frankish Empire and retreated to the Iberian Peninsula which they called al-Andalus.
The 719 Umayyad invasion of Gaul was the continuation of their conquest of the Visigothic Kingdom of Hispania. Septimania, in southern Gaul, was the last unconquered province of the Visigothic Kingdom. Muslim armies began to campaign in Septimania in 719. After the fall, in 720, of Narbonne, the capital of the Visigothic rump state, Umayyad armies composed of Arabs and Berbers turned north against Aquitaine. Their advance was stopped at the Battle of Toulouse in 721, but they sporadically raided the southern half of Gaul as far as Avignon and Lyon.
The Walser migrations (German: Walserwanderungen) (Italian: Migrazioni Walser) were a series of migrations by the Walser people from the Upper Rhône Valley in Valais to areas of the Alps. The migrations lasted from c.1150 to c.1450 and represented one of the last large movements of people in the Middle Ages.