"In A.D. 1122, a decree was issued by the Eastern emperor commanding all Venetians resident at Constantinople and other Greek ports, to quit the imperial dominions, and declaring the suspension of all intercourse between the two powers. The Venetians thus saw the most profitable branch of their commerce threatened with destruction, and during the two succeeding years they ravaged all the coasts of the empire with their fleets, capturing Rhodes, and sacking Andros, Samos, all the Ionian isles, and a portion of the Peloponnesus. There had been granted to the Venetians certain very important commercial privileges including that of having their commerce with Roumania held free from all taxation, their persons and property exempted from the jurisdiction of the Greek magistrates; and a street and section of the city of Constantinople was devoted exclusively to their residence and trade. ...[I]t was owing to the turbulence in this quarter and to the quarrel with their neighbors and rivals, "the ," in 1171, that the wrath of the emperor brought about the destructive war which followed, the great changes in the government of the Venetian republic, and the founding of its banking institution."