reasons the ancients instead settled at the head of the bay in what is today known as the Campo (hinterland) of Gibraltar. The town of Carteia, near the location of the modern Spanish town of San Roque, was founded by the Phoenicians around 950 BC on the site of an early settlement of the native Turdetani people. The Carthaginians took control of the town by 228 BC and it was captured by the Romans in 206 BC. It subsequently became Pompey's western base in his campaign of 67 BC against the pirates that menaced the Mediterranean Sea at the time. Carteia appears to have been abandoned after the Vandals sacked it in 409 AD during their march through Roman Hispania to Africa. The region subsequently fell under the rule of the Christianised Visigoths. Moorish rule (711–1309, 1333–1462) By 681 the armies of the Umayyad Caliphate had expanded from their original homeland of Arabia to conquer North Africa, the Middle East and large parts of West Asia, bringing Islam in their wake and converting local peoples to the new religion. The Berbers of North Africa, called Moors by the Christians, thereby became Muslims. The Strait of Gibraltar became the frontier between Muslim North Africa and Christian Hispania and thus gained a new strategic significance. Hispania descended into civil war in the 8th century as rival Visigothic factions fought for control of the throne. This gave the Moors the opportunity to invade Hispania and pursue a course of dividing-and-conquering the Christian factions. Following a raid in 710, a predominately Berber army under the command of Tariq ibn Ziyad crossed from North Africa in April 711 and landed somewhere in the vicinity of Gibraltar (though most likely not in the bay or at the Rock itself). Although Tariq's expedition was an outstanding success and led to the Islamic conquest of most of the Iberian peninsula, he ended his career in disgrace after falling out with the Arab general Musa bin Nusayr. His conquest nonetheless left a long-lasting legacy for Gibraltar: Mons Calpe was renamed Jebel Tariq, the Mount of Tariq, subsequently corrupted into Gibraltar. Gibraltar was fortified for the first time in 1160 by the Almohad Sultan Abd al-Mu'min in response to the coastal threat posed by the Christian kings of Aragon and Castile. Gibraltar was renamed Jebel al-Fath (the Mount of Victory), though this name did not persist, and a fortified town