The Hindu-Arabic Numerals c12.7

c12.7

Situated practically at the mouth of the Arno, Pisa formed with Genoa and Venice the trio of the greatest commercial centers of Italy at the opening of the thirteenth century. Even before Venice had captured the Levantine trade, Pisa had close relations with the East. An old Latin chronicle relates that in 1005 “Pisa was captured by the Saracens,” that in the following year “the Pisans overthrew the Saracens at Reggio,” and that in 1012 “the Saracens came to Pisa and destroyed it.” The city soon recovered, however, sending no fewer than a hundred and twenty ships to Syria in 1099,¹ founding a merchant colony in Constantinople a few years later,² and meanwhile carrying on an interurban warfare in Italy that seemed to stimulate it to great activity.³ A writer of 1114 tells us that at that time there were many heathen people — Turks, Libyans, Parthians, and Chaldeans — to be found in Pisa. It was in the midst of such wars, in a cosmopolitan and commercial town, in a center where literary work was not appreciated,⁴ that the genius of Leonardo appears as one of the surprises of history, warning us again that “we should draw no horoscope; that we should expect little, for what we expect will not come to pass.”⁵