The Marca Hispanica (Spanish Mark or March) was a buffer zone beyond the province of Septimania, first set up by Charlemagne in 795 as a defensive barrier to keep the Muslim Moors out of the Frankish Kingdom. March is the third month of the year in the Gregorian Calendar and one of seven Gregorian months with the length of 31 days. ... A buffer zone is any area that serves the purpose of keeping two or more other areas distant from one another, for whatever reason. ... Septimania was the western region of the Roman province of Gallia Narbonensis that passed under the control of the Visigothic kingdom in 462, when Septimania was ceded to Theodoric II, king of the Visigoths. ... Charlemagne (ca. ... A Muslim (Arabic: مسلم) (sometimes also spelled Moslem) is an adherent of Islam. ... The Moors were the medieval Muslim inhabitants of al-Andalus (the Iberian Peninsula including the present day Spain and Portugal) and the Maghreb, whose culture is often called Moorish. // Origins of the name The name derives from the old tribe of the Mauri and their kingdom, Mauretania. ... Statue of Charlemagne (also called Karl der Große, Charles the Great) in Frankfurt, Germany. ...

The title came to be applied to Catalonia before the start of the Reconquista, and indeed is sometimes used to mean this area alone. In its broader meaning, however, it refers to a group of early Spanish lordships created by the Franks, of which Andorra is the sole autonomous survivor. As time passed, these lordships tended to gain independence from Frankish imperial rule. Capital Barcelona Official languages Spanish and Catalan In Val dAran, also Aranese. ... For other uses, see Reconquista (Disambiguation). ...

After some vicissitudes, Charlemagne's son Louis took Barcelona from its Moorish emir in 801, thus anchoring Frankish power in the borderland between the Franks and the Moors. The count of Barcelona then became the principal representative of Frankish authority in the Spanish March, which included various outlying smaller territories, each ruled by a lesser miles with his armed retainers, who theoretically owed allegiance through the count to the Emperor, or with decreasing plausibility to his Carolingian and Ottonian successors. Each was the catlá ("castellan" or lord of the castle) in an area largely defined by a day's ride, the region dotted with strongholds becoming known by them, like Castile at a later date, as "Catalunya". Counties in the Pyrenees that appeared in the 9th century as appanages of the counts of Barcelona included Cerdanya, Girona and Urgell. Louis the Pious doing penance at Attigny in 822. ... The Moors were the medieval Muslim inhabitants of al-Andalus (the Iberian Peninsula including the present day Spain and Portugal) and the Maghreb, whose culture is often called Moorish. // Origins of the name The name derives from the old tribe of the Mauri and their kingdom, Mauretania. ... The now-extinct title of Count of Barcelona was, through much of its history, merged with that of King of Aragon; see also List of Aragonese Monarchs. ... Central Pyrenees The Pyrenees (French: Pyrénées; Spanish: Pirineos; Occitan: Pirenèus or Pirenèas; Catalan Pirineus; Aragonese: Perinés; Basque: Pirinioak) are a range of mountains in southwest Europe that form a natural border between France and Spain. ... The system of appanage has greatly influenced the territorial construction of France and explains the flag of many provinces of France. ... Map of Baixa Cerdanya in Catalonia Cerdanya (French Cerdagne) is one of the historical Catalan counties in the eastern Pyrenees, bordering the county of Alt Urgell. ... Houses on the Onyar river in Girona Girona (Catalan: Girona, Spanish: Gerona, French: Gérone) is a city located in the northeast of Catalonia, Spain, at the confluence of the rivers Ter and Onyar. ... Urgell is one of the historical Catalan counties, bordering on the counties of Pallars and Cerdanya. ...

In the early 9th century, Charlemagne began to issue a new kind of land grant, the aprisio, which reallocated land belonging to the imperial fisc in deserted areas, and included special rights and immunities that allowed considerable independence of action. Historians have interpreted the aprisio both as an early form of feudalism and in economic and military terms as a mechanism to entice settlers to a depopulated border region. Such self-sufficient landholders would aid the counts in providing armed men in defense of the Frankish frontier. Aprisio grants (the first ones were in Septimania) emanated directly from the Carolingian king, so that they reinforced central loyalties, to counterbalance the local power exercised by powerful marcher counts. Under the Merovingians and Carolingians, the fisc (Root word of fiscal) applied to the royal demesne which paid taxes, entirely in kind, from which the royal household was meant to be supported, though it rarely was. ... Roland pledges his fealty to Charlemagne; from a manuscript of a chanson de geste. ... In the United States and Canada, the frontier was the term applied until the end of the 19th century to the zone of unsettled land outside the region of existing settlements of European immigrants and their descendants. ... Septimania was the western region of the Roman province of Gallia Narbonensis that passed under the control of the Visigothic kingdom in 462, when Septimania was ceded to Theodoric II, king of the Visigoths. ...

But communications were arduous and the power center was far away. Primitive feudal entities developed, self-sufficient and agrarian, each ruled by a small hereditary military elite. The sequence in Catalonia exhibits a pattern that appears similarly in marches everywhere. The count of Barcelona is appointed by the king (Berà in 801), the appointment settles on the heirs of a strong count (Sunifred, fl. 844-848) and becomes a formality, until the countship is made hereditary (for Wifred the Hairy in 897) and finally the county is unilaterally declared independent (by Borrell II in 985). At each stage the de facto situation precedes the de jure assertion, which merely regularizes an existing fact of life. Feudalism comes from the Late Latin word feudum, itself borrowed from a Germanic root *fehu, a commonly used term in the Middle Ages which means fief, or land held under certain obligations by feodati. ... Berà was count of Barcelona from 801 until 820. ...

Certain of the counts aspired to the characteristically Frankish (Germanic) title "Margrave of the Spanish March", a "margrave" being a graf ("count") of the march. Margrave is the English and French form of the German title Markgraf (from Mark march and Graf count) and certain equivalent nobiliary (princely) titles in other languages. ...

The early history of Andorra provides a fairly typical career of a smaller lordship in this area, the only modern survivor in the Pyrenees of the Spanish March. Andorra is the last independent survivor of the so-called Marca Hispanica -- several buffer states created by Charlemagne to keep the Muslim Moors from advancing into Christian France. ...

External link

• [http://libro.uca.edu/lewis/sfc5.htm Archibald R. Lewis, "The Development of Southern French and Catalan Society, 718-1