inscription records circus games paid for by a citizen of unknown name to celebrate his achieving the sevirate, a kind of priesthood conferring high status. Games were held in the circus late into the 4th and early 5th centuries, an indication of active city life and ongoing patronage by wealthy elites. Toledo started to gain importance in late antiquity. There are indications that large private houses (domus) within the city walls were enlarged, while several large villas were built north of the city through the 3rd and 4th centuries. A church council was held in Toledo in the year 400 and 527 to discuss the conflict with Priscillianism. Already since 546 (possibly earlier), Visigoth rulers installed the capital of their kingdom in Toledo. King Theudis was in Toledo in 546, where he promulgated a law. Throughout the 7th century, a series of church councils—the so-called Councils of Toledo—discussed on the theological reconciliations on Nicene Christianity; they were held in Toledo under the Visigoths. By the end of the 7th century the bishop of Toledo was the leader of all other bishops in Hispania, a situation unusual in Europe. It was also unmatched as a symbolic center of monarchy. When internal divisions developed under the Visigothic nobles, Tariq bin Ziyad captured Toledo in 711 or 712, on behalf of the Umayyad Caliphate of Damascus, as part of the Islamic conquest of the Iberian Peninsula. Tariq's superior, Governor Musa disembarked in Cádiz and proceeded to Toledo, where he executed the Visigothic nobles, destroying much of the existing power structure. Middle Ages In the wake of the Umayyad conquest, "Toledo suffered a period of profound decline throughout much of the earlier centuries of Arab dominance in the peninsula." The invaders were ethnically diverse, and available evidence suggests that in the area of Toledo (locally known as Ṭulayṭulah under Islamic rule), Berber settlement predominated over Arab. In 742 the Berbers in Al-Andalus rebelled against the Arab Umayyad governors. They took control of the north and laid an unsuccessful siege on Toledo. Toledo retained its importance as a literary and ecclesiastical centre well into the mid-8th century; as demonstrated by the Chronicle of 754. During this period, several letters show of the primacy that the church of Toledo held. Under the Umayyad Emirate of Cordoba, Toledo was the centre of numerous insurrections against Cordobese government dating from 761 to 857. Girbib ibn-Abdallah, a poet from