When the plains in Spain didn't get rain

Middle September, an article came in from Spain about a drought in the late Visigothia. The article is en Ingles; I suppose Spanish versions exist as well.

As of 60 in the dispensation of the muhajireen, which may even have been AD 680 out in the Latin West, Mu'awiya and perhaps-more-so Yazid had decided upon peace in the East (AG 993, I estimate). Carthage was quietly Byzantine. To the west I don't know about Baetica, but I don't think the Greeks and Romans over there were bothering the Visigoths - by then. The old transalpine Gaul was, I think, Visigothic as well; the Merovings being wholly ineffective at the Loire, Marne, Seine, and Rhine. And then the Arabs had a civil war which allowed the Byzantines some comeback - up to Justinian II.

The article claims that the Med-facing Iberia had problems of its own AD 695-725 ("1250 BP"). The Artemisia plant was at its highest pollenation then; basically Spain's answer to the cactus. Lake Zoñar was getting low, too; with concomitant rise in Gelasinospora spores. This drought was on par with the calamitous AD 545-70, AD ~700 being the driest year in the last five millennia. The paper labels the later drought, accordingly, "Period II". Historical sources notch the start of poor weather in Anatolia AD 670 which spread to Spain AD 680.

The last kings were Ervigio 680-7, Egica 687-702/3, Wittiza until 711 and then the civil war and invasion. Egica was contemporary with Justinian II's failure and exile; then the loss of Carthage, in the later AD 690s. This last generation is about the only generation for which I'd allow a historian to cite the "invisi-goths".

After AD 711 the Umayyads had fourteen years to consolidate their victory, after which AD 725 Allah once more opened the firmament and allowed the waters to return. (Although insufficient for supply of the ghazwa October 732, aka Hammer-Time.) AD 755, when came 'Abd al-Rahman al-Umawi, the weather turned bad again for Period III; until AD 770 ("1150"). 'Abd al-Rahman could at least enjoy his last eighteen years, after that.

Zoñar reached its lowest point in the last 2500 years, AD 650-750. I note this is not Period III. I must presume that the irrigation had got trashed during the depopulations and then invasion, so the Period III didn't hit the lake as hard.

One nit I'd pick, or perhaps clarification, is that, when 'Abd al-Rahman assumed the Andalusi amirate, he did not do so as the caliphal heir. He bowed - however nominally - to the 'Abbasids. I would not name the Umayyads' AD 711 invasion of Spain an "establishment" of that decades-old Caliphate. That Caliphate wouldn't be (re)declared (in Andalus only) for some centuries later.