Around the 10th and 9th century BC, Phoenician merchants were known to have made their presence in Sardinia, which acted as a geographical mediator in between the Iberian and the Italian peninsula. In the eighth and seventh centuries, the Phoenicians began to develop permanent settlements, politically arranged as city-states in similar fashion to the Lebanese coastal areas. It did not take long before they started gravitating around the Carthaginian sphere of influence, whose level of prosperity spurred Carthage to send a series of expeditionary forces to the island; although they were initially repelled by the natives, the North African city vigorously pursued a policy of active imperialism and, by the sixth century, managed to establish its political hegemony and military control over South-Western Sardinia. Punic began to be spoken in the area, and many words entered ancient Sardinian as well. Names like "giara" "plateau" (cf. Hebrew "forest, scrub"), "g(r)uspinu" "nasturtium" (from the Punic "cusmin"), "curma" "fringed rue" (cf. "ḥarmal" "Syrian rue"), "mítza" "source" (cf. Hebrew "mitsa", "metza" "place whence something emerges"), "síntziri" "marsh horsetail" (from the Punic "zunzur" "common knotgrass"), "tzeúrra" "sprout" (from the Punic "zeraʿ" "seed"), "tzichirìa" "dill" (from the Punic "sikkíria"; cf. Hebrew "šēkār" "ale") and "tzípiri" "rosemary" (from the Punic "zibbir") are commonly used, especially in the modern Sardinian varieties of the Campidanese plain, while proceeding northwards the influence is more limited to place names, such as the town of Magomadas, "Macumadas" in Nuoro or "Magumadas" in Gesico and Nureci, all of which deriving from the Punic "maqom hadash" "new city".