Count Cassius

Who is Count Cassius?

Count Cassius, also called "Count Casius", was the Hispano-Roman or Visigothic nobleman who founded the Banu Qasi dynasty.

According to the tenth century Muwalladi historian Ibn al-Qūṭiyya, Count Cassius converted to Islam in 714, shortly after the Umayyad conquest of Hispania, as a client of the Umayyads; his family came to be called the Banu Qasi. Cassius had converted at the hands of the Arab, Hassan ibn Yassar al-Hudhali, qadi in Zaragoza at the time of Abd ar-Rahman's arrival in the peninsula, as a means to preserve his lands and political power. Cassius joined forces with Musa ibn Nusayr and Tariq ibn Ziyad and travelled to Damascus to personally swear allegiance to the Caliph Al-Walid I.

An Arab historian who lived in the eleventh century, Ibn Hazm, identified Cassius's sons as Fortun, Abu Tawr, Abu Salama, Yunus, and Yahya. The Banu Qasi dynasty descended from Fortun, the eldest son; the second son may have been the Abu Taur of Huesca who invited Charlemagne to Zaragoza in 778; and the Banu Salama, a family that ruled Huesca and Barbitanya in the late tenth century, may have descended from Abu Salama.