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 Annales also record a Muslims naval attack on Pisa in 1004 and a Pisan victory over the Muslims off Reggio in 1005. 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. 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. 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. 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 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. 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. First expeditions (1015) Mujāhid was probably motivated to conquer Sardinia in order to legitimise his power in Denia and the Balearics. A civil