Republic of Pisa

The Republic of Pisa was the Tuscan maritime republic that ruled the western Mediterranean from the eleventh century until 1406. Its merchants dominated Italian and Levantine trade for a hundred years, its fleet sacked Reggio in 1005 and sailed the Balearic expedition of 1113 to 1115 and, with Genoa, tore Sardinia from the Saracen Mujahid in 1016 to win supremacy in the Tyrrhenian Sea. The Crusades gave Pisan traders walled quarters in the ports of the east, and the profits raised the cathedral, the baptistery and the leaning tower on the Field of Miracles. Pisa fought Genoa at sea and Florence and Lucca on land, but Meloria in 1284 broke its fleet against Genoa, and the city never recovered its primacy. Weakened and indebted, Pisa sold its freedom dearly and lost it: Florence took the city in 1406, closing three centuries in which merchants, not kings, had made a Tuscan commune a Mediterranean power.