The Italian organized crime families called the Mafia did not originate in Sicily, as many believe. Nor are they based after the organization of Imperial Rome. It is the Moorish pirate companies of the 16th and 17th centuries where the Sicilians learned to organize their ranks to fend off foreign intrusion. These 'companies' were called Mahfils, an Afro-Arabic word meaning 'union' or 'to unify, a word later Anglicized and pronounced 'Mafia’. These organized 'companies' were structured under Beylerbeys (The Boss of Bosses, Chief of Chiefs, or Governor-Generals), Beys or Deys (Underbosses, or sub-Chiefs), Reis (Captains), Crews (Soldiers), Corsairs (Enforcers), and Associates (trade partners). These 'companies' controlled, protected, and enforced the laws of the Mediterranean. In their cities in Tunis, Algiers, Sale, and many other North African coastal regions, these Moorish companies controlled city politics, game rackets, trade, policing, and settled disputes with their own code of justice. And though dubbed as 'pirates’, these Moorish companies were far more loyal and less brutal than the European privateer, and held to a strict code of honor.
Sources: A Company of Moors by Justin Thomas
Pirate Utopias: Moorish Corsairs & European Renegadoes by Peter L. Wilson
White Slavery in the Barbary States by Charles Sumner
What Every Italian - American (Italian - French, Italian - German, Italian - Brazilian, Italian - Argentinian, Italian - English, etc.) Should Know! by Prince Uriel Bey
