As founder of Madina, just to clarify: i fully agree.
Madina is NOT a pirate realm.
Its city is build by sailors of a mutnied ship as a new home and a free trading port.
This atracted many merchants and eventually nobles, who founded a Republic on the island in order to civilize and colonize it.
The Republic was mainly designed by the former captain of these sailors, Abbot, my character, but it is still founded by nobles.
Its peasants look and might act like what you know of pirates and the term is used in relation to Madina to explain this culture but in no way should you see the realm as a bunch of commoners, even though it's nobles are in fact, lets say, a little different... 
And then all the smart sailors and artisans set sail for D'Hara as soon as they could, realizing that there was little sailing to be done by this insular realm.
