Septimania in the context of "Pepin the Short"

Al-Andalus (Arabic: الأَنْدَلُس, romanized: al-ʾAndalus) was the Muslim-ruled area of the Iberian Peninsula. The name refers to the different Muslim states that controlled these territories at various times between 711 and 1492. At its greatest geographical extent, it occupied most of the peninsula as well as Septimania under Umayyad rule. These boundaries changed through a series of conquests Western historiography has traditionally characterized as the Reconquista, eventually shrinking to the south and finally to the Emirate of Granada.

As a political domain, it successively constituted a province of the Umayyad Caliphate, initiated by the Caliph al-Walid I (711–750); the Emirate of Córdoba (c. 750–929); the Caliphate of Córdoba (929–1031); the first taifa kingdoms (1009–1110); the Almoravid Empire (1085–1145); the second taifa period (1140–1203); the Almohad Caliphate (1147–1238); the third taifa period (1232–1287); and ultimately the Nasrid Emirate of Granada (1238–1492). Under the Caliphate of Córdoba, the city of Córdoba became one of the leading cultural and economic centres throughout the Mediterranean Basin, Europe, and the Islamic world. Achievements that advanced Islamic and Western science came from al-Andalus, including major advances in trigonometry (Jabir ibn Aflah), astronomy (al-Zarqali), surgery (al-Zahrawi), pharmacology (Ibn Zuhr), and agronomy (Ibn Bassal and Abu'l-Khayr al-Ishbili). Al-Andalus became a conduit for cultural and scientific exchange between the Islamic and Christian worlds.

Recceswinth (died 1 September 672) was the Visigothic King of Hispania and Septimania in 649–672. He ruled jointly with his father Chindaswinth until his father's death in 653.

Gallia Narbonensis (Latin for "Gaul of Narbonne", from its chief settlement) was a Roman province located in Occitania and Provence, in Southern France. It was also known as Provincia Nostra ("Our Province"), because it was the first Roman province north of the Alps, and as Gallia Transalpina ("Transalpine Gaul"), distinguishing it from Cisalpine Gaul in Northern Italy. It became a Roman province in the late 2nd century BC. Gallia Narbonensis was bordered by the Pyrenees Mountains on the west, the Cévennes to the north, the Alps on the east, and the Gulf of Lion on the south; the province included the majority of the Rhone catchment. The western region of Gallia Narbonensis was known as Septimania. The province was a valuable part of the Roman Empire, owing to the Greek colony and later Roman Civitas of Massalia, its location between the Spanish provinces and Rome, and its financial output.

Sisebut (Latin: Sisebutus; Spanish: Sisebuto; also Sisebuth, Sisebur, Sisebod or Sigebut; c. 565 – February 621) was King of the Visigoths and ruler of Hispania, Gallaecia, and Septimania from 612 until his death in 621. His rule was marked by forced Christian conversion, anti-Judaic measures, Roman-like administration, and intellectual cosmopolitanism.

The Spanish March or Hispanic March was a march or military buffer zone established c. 795 by Charlemagne in the eastern Pyrenees and nearby areas, to protect the new territories of the Christian Carolingian Empire—the Duchy of Gascony, the Duchy of Aquitaine, and Septimania—from the Muslim Umayyad Emirate of Córdoba in al-Andalus.

In its broader meaning, the Spanish March sometimes refers to a group of early Iberian and trans-Pyrenean lordships or counts coming under Frankish rule. As time passed, these lordships merged or gained independence from Frankish imperial rule.

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 count of Toulouse (Occitan: comte de Tolosa, French: comte de Toulouse) was the ruler of Toulouse during the 8th to 13th centuries. Originating as vassals of the Frankish kings, the hereditary counts ruled the city of Toulouse and its surrounding county from the late 9th century until 1270. The counts and other family members were also at various times counts of Quercy, Rouergue, Albi, and Nîmes, and sometimes margraves (military defenders of the Holy Roman Empire) of Septimania and Provence. Count Raymond IV founded the Crusader state of Tripoli, and his descendants were also counts there.They reached the zenith of their power during the 11th and 12th centuries, but after the Albigensian Crusade the county fell to the kingdom of France, nominally in 1229 and de facto in 1271.

Later the title was revived for Louis Alexandre, Count of Toulouse, a bastard of Louis XIV (1678–1737).