In 1015 and again in 1016, the forces of Mujāhid al-ʿĀmirī from the taifa of Denia and the Balearics, in the east of Muslim Spain (al-Andalus), attacked Sardinia and attempted to establish control over it. In both these years joint expeditions from the maritime republics of Pisa and Genoa repelled the invaders. These Pisan–Genoese expeditions to Sardinia were approved and supported by the Papacy in aid of the sovereign Sardinian medieval kingdoms, known as Judicates, which resisted autonomously after the collapse of the Byzantine rule on the island. Modern historians often see them as proto-Crusades.Tyerman 2006, 55. After their victory, the Italian cities turned on each other. For this reason, the Christian sources for the expedition are primarily from Pisa, which celebrated its double victory over the Muslims and the Genoese with an inscription on the walls of its Duomo.Orvietani Busch 2001, 168 n35. The only Genoese record of their participation in 1016 is a passing mention in the Annales ianuenses of Caffarus, where he is quoting the words of some ambassadors for Genoa when they were seeking favour from the Emperor Frederick I in 1165. For French translations of all the pertinent primary sources, cf. Pierre Guichard and Denis Menjot (ed.), Pays d'Islam et monde latin, Xe–XIIIe siècle: textes et documents (Lyon: Presses Universitaires de Lyon, 2000), 20–23.
Background
Denia had perhaps hosted a naval squadron under the Caliphs of Córdoba in the tenth century; its port was "very good and very old". According to al-Idrīsī, as quoted in al-Himyarī, its shipyards were important in outfitting the caliphal fleet, and the fleet launched against Sardinia may have originated in them.Bruce 2006, 128. In 940 or 941, the Caliphate signed treaties with Amalfi, Barcelona, Narbonne and the judgeships of Sardinia promising safe conduct in the western Mediterranean, an area where they had been subject to raids from Muslim pirates based out of Fraxinetum, the Balearic IslandsOnly under Abd-ar-Rahman III (912–61) did Fraxinetum and the Balearics come under Caliphal control. Bruce 2006, 130. and the eastern ports of Spain, the so-called Sharq al-Andalus (including Denia and the famous pirate base at Pechina). There is a record of an embassy from Sardinia to Córdoba shortly after the treaty,In Ibn Hayyān. Bruce 2006, 130–31. and from 943 to c. 1000 there are no recorded Muslim attacks on the Christian ports of the western Mediterranean.Bruce 2006, 131. Ibn Khaldūn records one, but he is generally considered unreliable on this point.
The Carolingian navy had a presence in both Pisa and Genoa in the early ninth century.Bruce 2006, 128 n5, citing Einhard's Annales regni francorum; Regino of Prüm; and the Miracula sancti Genesii. The north Italian cities had sent ships to protect Sardinia from a Muslim fleet in 829,In Einhard, Annales, and the anonymous Vita Hludowici imperatoris (Bruce 2006, 132). Sardinia saw Muslim raids in 710, 752, 813, 816, 817 and 935 (Heywood 1921, 20). but it was probably a Muslim fleet operating out of Sardinia that raided Rome in 841.According to the Liber pontificalis. Bruce 2006, 132. For the state of Sardinian politics in this period, cf. Heywood 1921, 15–19. The period of the late tenth and early eleventh centuries corresponded with a large growth in Pisa's population and in its geographical extent: its walls and fortifications doubled in scope as its suburbs grew. It entered into frequent territorial disputes with neighbouring Lucca, often violent, and its need for imports grew commensurately. Genoa, with even less hinterland to support its citizens and its shipyards, was also pressured into looking for new markets.Jordan 2001, 29.
The Annales pisani antiquissimi, the civic annals of Pisa compiled by Bernardus Maragonis, record only a few events from the tenth century, and all have to do with the waging of war. In 970 "the Pisans were in Calabria", probably making war on its Muslim occupants in order to secure safe passage for their merchants through the Strait of Messina that separated Muslim Sicily from the peninsula.The Muslim geographer Ibn Hawqal notes that the Calabrian Greeks often paid tribute to the Sicilian Muslims, and the Cambridge Chronicle records the presence of a mosque in Reggio di Calabria as late as the second half of the tenth century, testifying to a sizable Muslim settlement there. Bruce 2006, 129. The Annales also record a Muslims naval attack on Pisa in 1004 and a Pisan victory over the Muslims off Reggio in 1005.Also recorded in the Breviarium Pisanae Historiae and Ranieri Sardo, Cronaca di Pisa. Bruce 2006, 129; cf. F. Novati, "Un nuovo testo degli Annales Pisani antiquissimi e le prime lotte di Pisa contra gli Arabi", Centenario della nascita di Michele Amari, vol. 2 (Palermo: 1910). The Muslim assault of 1004 may have originated in Spain. The Pisan attack was likely a response, and perhaps a serious attempt to put an end to Muslim piracy, for which Reggio served as a base.Bruce 2006, 129–30. In 1006 an embassy from the Byzantine emperor Basil II to the court of the caliph Hishām II released some Andalusian soldiers that had been captured off the coasts of Corsica and Sardinia.There may be some unknown relation between this Byzantine embassy and the captives of 1006 and the Pisan expedition against Reggio in 1005. It may also show Byzantine interest in Sardinia continuing into the eleventh century; otherwise it ended in the early tenth. Bruce 2006, 131–32. Sicily, Corsica and Sardinia comprised the "route of the islands", which linked the north Italian towns to the markets of northern Africa and the eastern Mediterranean. Without control of the islands the expansion of Pisan and Genoese trade would have been severely hampered.Bruce 2006, 133. The rise of Pisan and Genoese trade in connection with increased military activity, especially against the enemies of the Christendom, has a contemporary parallel on the other side of Italy in the growing Republic of Venice.Erdmann 1977, 111.
In 1011 the Pisan annals record that a "fleet from Spain" came to destroy the city, which suggests that the aggression was planned and organised and not merely a piratical raid. The most probable source of that fleet was the port of Denia, then ruled by Mujāhid al-ʿĀmirī (Mogehid). According to the chronicle of Ibn ʿIdhārī, Mujāhid received Denia from the Córdoban hājib Muhammad Ibn Abī ʿĀmir al-Manṣūr, who died in 1002. It is unclear from Ibn ʿIdhārī whether Mujāhid conquered the Balearics from his base at Denia, or whether he took control of Denia from a base in the Balearics.Bruce 2006, 131. A Muslim enclave may have been established in Sardinia by Mujāhid's Balearic predecessor around 1000. In 1004, Pope John VIII urged the Christian powers to expel the Muslims from the island, which lay directly across the sea from Rome.Jordan 2001, 34.
First expeditions (1015) Mujāhid was probably motivated to conquer Sardinia in order to legitimise his power in Denia and the Balearics. A civil war (fitna) had broken out between various factions (taifas) after 1009 in the declining caliphate. A freed slave, Mujāhid found it necessary to legitimise his position by appointing a puppet caliph, ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿUbayd Allāh ibn Walīd al-Muʿiṭī, in 1013. He probably saw an opportunity to secure his authority by waging a holy war (jihād), a device which had been used effectively by the man who appointed Mujāhid to rule Denia, al-Manṣūr. The conquest of Sardinia was thus undertaken in the name of al-Muʿiṭī, and the Islamic historian Ibn al-Khatīb praised Mujāhid before God for his piety in the event. One school of Islamic jurisprudence, represented in Mujāhid's day by al-Mawardī, recognised "emirs by conquest", those like Mujāhid who had a right to rule lands they conquered for Islam.
In 1015 Mujāhid came to Sardinia with 120 ships, a large number which confirms that the expedition was not designed for raiding.The number comes from Ibn ʿIdhārī. Bruce 2006, 132. The twelfth-century Pisan Liber maiolichinus, a history of the 1113–1115 Balearic Islands expedition, records that Mujāhid controlled all of the Sardinian coastal plain.Omnia cum plano tenuit montana tyrampnus (III, 74). Bruce 2006, 132. For the Latin text of the Liber, cf. this PDF . In the Pisan histories of the time the expedition to Sardinia of 1015 is described tersely: "the Pisans and Genoese made war with Mujāhid in Sardinia, and defeated him by the grace of God"Annales pisani, quoted in Bruce 2006, 132. and "the Pisans and Genoese defended Sardinia."Breviarium Pisanae Historiae, quoted in Bruce 2006, 132. The annals covering the years 1005–16 are quoted in their entirety below. The dating of the expedition to 1015 is based on the Pisan calendar, which also dates Mujāhid's second expedition to 1017:Salvatori 2002, 23; Heywood 1921, 22 n2.
1005Fuit capta Pisa a Saracenis.Pisa was taken by the Saracens.1006Fecerunt Pisani bellum cum Saracenis ad Regium, et gratia Dei vicerunt illos in die Sancti Sixti.The Pisans went to war against the Saracens of Reggio (Calabria) and, with the grace of God, they were victorious on Saint Sixtus' day [6 August].1012Stolus de Ispania venit Pisas, et destruxit eam.From Spain an expedition reached Pisa and destroyed her.1016Fecerunt Pisani et Ianuenses bellum cum Mugieto in Sardineam, et gratia Dei vicerunt illum.The Pisans and the Genoese made war against Musetto in Sardinia and, with the grace of God, they were victorious over him. The account of the Liber maiolichinus is more detailed, although it excludes the Genoese, and so is probably referring to the 1015 expedition. It reports that even the Pisan nobles, in their eagerness, took turns rowing the galleys.Tunc non erubuit quisquam de nobilitateViribus equoreas remos urguere per undas (III, 77–78) It also compares them to starving lions rushing their prey.Qualiter accipitres pavidas peciere columbas, Et sicut Libici poscunt armenta leones,Tunc cum longa fames in viscera serpit eorum,Sic sic accelerant, sic poscunt bella frementes,Quos Pisana manus sevos ductabat in hostes (III, 81–85) Mujāhid fled at the approach of the Italians, according to the Liber, which does not mention an actual engagement in 1015.
Second Muslim expedition (1016) Mujāhid returned to Sardinia in 1016 intending a more thorough conquest of the island. To this end he brought along a reported thousand horses from the Balearics. On these islands, which were renowned for their horses and mules, Mujāhid had reformed the tax system and put the stables at the service of the government in preparation for his expedition. He arrived off Sardinia with a large fleet and a landing force capable of a rapid conquest. The local Sardinian ruler, Salusio, the judge of Cagliari, was killed in the fighting and the organised resistance broke down.Bruce 2006, 134. His troops may have met up with garrisons that had remained on the island after the failed expedition of 1015. He also established a beachhead at Luni, on the coast between Genoa and Pisa, according to the eleventh-century German chronicler and bishop Thietmar of Merseburg (Thitmarus), who mis-dates the event to 1015.Bruce 2006, 132; Orvietani Busch 1991, 294 n11. Luni was reportedly taken by surprise, but the citizens and the bishopEither Filippo I or Guido II. managed to flee. Both town and countryside were pillaged without resistance.Orvietani Busch 1991, 288.