Hisham III was the last Umayyad

Umayyad

The Umayyad Caliphate was the second of the four major Arab caliphates established after the death of Muhammad. It was ruled by the Umayyad dynasty, whose name derives from Umayya ibn Abd Shams, the great-grandfather of the first Umayyad caliph. Although the Umayyad family originally came from the...

 ruler in the Al-Andalus

Al-Andalus

Al-Andalus was the Arabic name given to a nation and territorial region also commonly referred to as Moorish Iberia. The name describes parts of the Iberian Peninsula and Septimania governed by Muslims , at various times in the period between 711 and 1492, although the territorial boundaries...

 (Moorish

Moors

The description Moors has referred to several historic and modern populations of the Maghreb region who are predominately of Berber and Arab descent. They came to conquer and rule the Iberian Peninsula for nearly 800 years. At that time they were Muslim, although earlier the people had followed...

 Iberia

Iberian Peninsula

The Iberian Peninsula , sometimes called Iberia, is located in the extreme southwest of Europe and includes the modern-day sovereign states of Spain, Portugal and Andorra, as well as the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar...

) (1026–1031), and the last person to hold the title Caliph of Cordoba.

Hisham III, the brother of Abd ar-Rahman IV

Abd ar-Rahman IV

Abd ar-Rahman IV Mortada was the Caliph of Cordoba in the Umayyad dynasty of the Al-Andalus , succeeding Suleiman II, in 1018. That same year, he was murdered at Cadiz while fleeing from a battle in which he had been deserted by the very supporters which had brought him into power...

, was chosen as Caliph after long negotiations between the governors of the border regions and the people of Cordoba

Córdoba, Spain

-History:The first trace of human presence in the area are remains of a Neanderthal Man, dating to c. 32,000 BC. In the 8th century BC, during the ancient Tartessos period, a pre-urban settlement existed. The population gradually learned copper and silver metallurgy...

. He could not enter Cordoba until 1029 as the city was occupied by the Berber

Berber people

Berbers are the indigenous peoples of North Africa west of the Nile Valley. They are continuously distributed from the Atlantic to the Siwa oasis, in Egypt, and from the Mediterranean to the Niger River. Historically they spoke the Berber language or varieties of it, which together form a branch...

 armies of the Hammudids.

Although he tried to consolidate the Caliphate, the raising of taxes (to pay for mosques amongst other things) led to heavy opposition from the Muslim clerics. After the murder of his Visir al-Hakam by a conspiracy of Cordoban Patricians, Hisham was imprisoned. He managed to escape, but died in exile in 1036 in Lerida.

After the Caliphate fell with the overthrow of Hisham III in 1031 , the Caliphate's land holdings — already much diminished from its height in power just 100 years past — devolved into a number of militarily weak but culturally advanced taifa

Taifa

In the history of the Iberian Peninsula, a taifa was an independent Muslim-ruled principality, usually an emirate or petty kingdom, though there was one oligarchy, of which a number formed in the Al-Andalus after the final collapse of the Umayyad Caliphate of Córdoba in 1031.-Rise:The origins of...

s.