The 754 chronicler ranked Spain’s fall with Troy, Jerusalem, Babylon, and Rome

Evidence

Who can relate such perils? Who can enumerate such grievous disasters? Even if every limb were transformed into a tongue, it would be beyond human nature to express the ruin of Spain and its many and great evils. But let me summarize everything for the reader on one brief page. Leaving aside all of the innumerable disasters from the time of Adam up to the present, which this cruel, unclean world has brought to countless regions and cities—that which, historically, the city of Troy sustained when it fell; that which Jerusalem suffered, as foretold by the eloquence of the prophets; that which Babylon bore, according to the eloquence of the scriptures; that which finally Rome went through, martyrially graced with the nobility of the apostles—all this and more Spain, once so delightful and now rendered so miserable, endured as much to its honor as to its disgrace. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 476