The Vandals were a Germanic tribe that originated in Scandinavia, migrating to southern Poland in the 2nd century BC and eventually settling in Silesia. In 330 AD, the Goths confined the Vandals to Pannonia, reversing years of conquest that came during the Third-Century Crisis period of the Roman Empire, and in 400 AD they were forced to cross the Rhine into Gaul by the invading Huns. In 409, the Vandals entered the Iberian Peninsula, and they conquered Baetica in the south before invading North Africa. By 439, the Vandals ruled southern Spain, North Africa, Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia, Malta, and the Balearic Islands, taking the rebuilt city of Carthage as their capital. The Vandals defended North Africa from the Romans, who attempted to recapture the region, and in 455 the Vandals sacked Rome. The Vandalic kingdom would exist until the Byzantine Empire conquered it in 533-534 under Emperor Justinian. After their conquest, most of the surviving male Vandals were shippded back to Constantinople to be absorbed into the Byzantine military and disappeared as a distinct ethnic unit, while others either remained in North Africa or migrated back to Spain. The 455 sack of Rome led to the creation of the term "vandalism", meaning senseless destruction or the defacing of artwork, although the cruelty of the Vandals was often exaggerated. Conversely, their name lives on in the Spanish region of Andalusia, which comes from the Moorish province of al-Andalus, meaning "land of the Vandals".
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