Pisan and Genoese fleets raid Mahdia

1004

The Italian maritime republics, beginning a long turn outward, burned shipping at the Fatimid harbor of Mahdia on the Tunisian coast. Piracy and commerce were still the same activity in this age. The raid signaled that Christian sea power was awakening in the western Mediterranean basin, foreshadowing the naval dominance that Pisa and Genoa would assert across the region for the next three centuries.