Mujahid's invasion of Sardinia

In the Holy Land (1095–1291) Later Crusades (1291–1717) Northern (1147–1410) Against Christians (1204–1588) Popular (1096–1320) 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.

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.

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.

[3] 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 Islands[4] and the eastern ports of Spain, the so-called Sharq al-Andalus (including Denia and the famous pirate base at Pechina).

[9] 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.

[14] 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.

[15] 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.

In 1004, Pope John VIII urged the Christian powers to expel the Muslims from the island, which lay directly across the sea from Rome.

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.

[15] 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.

[19] 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.

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 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.

[31] The area he controlled, the plain between the central mountains and the sea, corresponded roughly to the Judicature of Cagliari (regnum Calaritanum in the Liber, III, 45), whose judge he had defeated and killed.

The site of one Islamic fortification can be approximated, for a Greek charter of 1081 makes reference to a "castro de Mugete" (castle of Mujāhid) near Cagliari, the chief city and port of the judicature.

[34] The liberus de paniliu, a designation for the "semi-free Christian children of Muslim slaves",[34] appear in several eleventh-century donation charters from the region.

Religious diversity, owing to a large endemic Arab population, may also explain the slowness with which monasticism of either the Western or Eastern variety encroached upon the area.

[38] Thietmar, a much closer source, describes the attack on Luni by the "enemies of Christ" and how Benedict responded by calling "all leaders (rectores) and protectors (defensores) of the Church" to kill them and chase them away:[39] Travelling by ship, the Saracens came to Lombardy and seized the city of Luna whose bishop was barely able to escape.

When news of these events reached Pope Benedict, he summoned all the rectors and defenders of holy mother church, and both asked and commanded them to join him in an attack on these presumptuous enemies of Christ.

His fleet was badly battered by a storm as it passed through a rocky cove, according to the Arabic sources,[43] and the Pisans and Genoese picked off the remaining ships, capturing Mujāhid's mother and his heir.

Mujāhid also continued raiding the County of Barcelona and exacting tribute into the 1020s, when the count, Berenguer Ramon I, called upon a Norman adventurer, Roger I of Tosny, to protect him.