The republic of Pisa, which vainly sought to save from ruin these first Italian republics of the Middle Ages, was a city which navigation and commerce had enriched. Genoa, which soon became its rival, had escaped the pillage of these northern conquerors, and had preserved a constant intercourse with Constantinople and with Syria, from whence the citizens brought the rich merchandise which they afterwards dispersed throughout Lombardy. The Pisans and Genoese, invigorated by a seafaring life, were accustomed to defend with the sword the merchandise which they conveyed from one extremity to the other of the Mediterranean. They were often in conflict with the Saracens, like them addicted to maritime commerce, to which these last frequently added piracy. The Saracens pillaged Genoa in the year 936. In 1004 they entered a suburb of Pisa, and again invested that city in the year 1011. Their colonies in Sardinia, Corsica, and the Balearic Isles constantly menaced Italy. The Pisans, seconded by the Genoese, in their turn attacked Sardinia, in the year 1015; but completed the conquest only in 1050. They established colonies there, and divided it into fiefs between the most illustrious families of Pisa and Genoa. They also conquered the Balearic Isles from the Saracens, between the years 1114 and 1116.[e] The Pisan fleet of three hundred sail, commanded by the archbishop Pietro Moriconi, attacked the Balearic Isles, where as many as twenty thousand Christians were said to be held captive by the Moslems, and returned loaded with spoil and with a multitude of Christian and Moslem prisoners. The former were set at liberty or ransomed, and among the latter was the last descendant of the reigning dynasty. The chief eunuch, who had governed Majorca, perished in the siege. Immediately afterwards the fourteen years’ war with Genoa broke out. The two republics contested the dominion of the sea, and both claimed supreme power over the islands of Corsica and Sardinia. A papal edict awarding the supremacy of Corsica to the Pisan church proved sufficient cause for the war, which went on from 1118 to 1132. Then Innocent II transferred the supremacy over part of Corsica to the Genoese church, and compensated Pisa by grants in Sardinia and elsewhere. Accordingly, to gratify the pope and the emperor Lothair II, the Pisans entered the Neapolitan territory to combat the Normans. They aided in the vigorous defence of the city of Naples, and twice attacked and pillaged Amalfi, in 1135 and 1137, with such effect that the town never regained its prosperity. It has been said that the copy of the _Pandects_ then taken by the Pisans from Amalfi was the first known to them, but in fact they were already acquainted with those laws. The war with Genoa never came to a real end. Even after the retaking of Jerusalem by the Moslems (1187), the Pisans and Genoese again met in conflict in the East, and performed many deeds of valour.