"Mafia" is an informal term that is used to describe criminal organizations that bear a strong similarity to the Italian Mafia. The central activity of such an organization would be the arbitration of disputes between criminals as well as the organization and enforcement of illicit agreements between criminals through the use of or threat of violence. Mafias often engage in secondary activities such as gambling, loan sharking, drug-trafficking, prostitution, and fraud.
The 'Ndrangheta, originating in the Southern Italian region of Calabria, is widely considered the richest and most powerful mafia in the world.
The term "mafia" was originally applied to the Sicilian Mafia. The term has since expanded to encompass other organizations of similar methods and purpose, e.g., "the Russian Mafia" or "the Japanese Mafia". The term was coined by the press and is informal; the criminal organizations themselves have their own names (e.g. the Sicilian Mafia and the related Italian-American Mafia refer to their organizations as "Cosa Nostra"; the "Japanese Mafia" calls itself "Ninkyō dantai" but is more commonly known as "Yakuza" by the public; and "Russian Mafia" groups often call themselves "Bratva"). When used alone and without any qualifier, "Mafia" or "the Mafia" typically refers to either the Sicilian Mafia or the Italian-American Mafia and sometimes Italian organized crime in general (e.g., Camorra, 'Ndrangheta, etc.).
Etymology
The word mafia (; ) derives from the Sicilian adjective , which, roughly translated, means "swagger", but can also be translated as "boldness" or "bravado". In reference to a man, (mafioso in Italian) in 19th century Sicily signified "fearless", "enterprising", and "proud", according to scholar Diego Gambetta. In reference to a woman, however, the feminine-form adjective means 'beautiful' or 'attractive'.
Because Sicily was once an Islamic emirate from 831 to 1072, mafia may have come to Sicilian through Arabic, though the word's origins are uncertain. Possible Arabic roots of the word include: () = exempted. In Islamic law, jizya, is the yearly tax imposed on non-Muslims residing in Muslim lands, and people who pay it are "exempted" from prosecution. màha = quarry, cave; especially the mafie, the caves in the region of Marsala, which acted as hiding places for persecuted Muslims and later served other types of refugees, in particular Giuseppe Garibaldi's "Redshirts" after their embarkment on Sicily in 1860 in the struggle for Italian unification. () = aggressive boasting, bragging () = rejected, considered to be the most plausible derivation; developed into marpiuni (swindler) to marpiusu and finally mafiusu. () = safety, protection () = the name of an Arab tribe that ruled Palermo. The local peasants imitated these Arabs and as a result the tribe's name entered the popular lexicon. The word mafia was then used to refer to the defenders of Palermo during the Sicilian Vespers against rule of the Capetian House of Anjou on 30 March 1282. (), meaning "place of shade". The word "shade" meaning refuge or derived from refuge. After the Normans destroyed the Saracen rule in Sicily in the eleventh century, Sicily became feudalistic. Most Arab smallholders became serfs on new estates, with some escaping to "the Mafia." It became a secret refuge.
The public's association of the word with the criminal secret society was perhaps inspired by the 1863 play ("The Mafiosi of the Vicaria") by Giuseppe Rizzotto and Gaspare Mosca. The words mafia and are never mentioned in the play. The play is about a Palermo prison gang with traits similar to the Mafia: a boss, an initiation ritual, and talk of "umirtà" (omertà or code of silence) and "pizzu" (a codeword for extortion money). The play had great success throughout Italy. Soon after, the use of the term "mafia" began appearing in the Italian state's early reports on the phenomenon. The word made its first official appearance in 1865 in a report by the prefect of Palermo .
Definitions
The term "Mafia" was never officially used by Sicilian mafiosi, who prefer to refer to their organization as "Cosa Nostra". Nevertheless, it is typically by comparison to the groups and families that comprise the Sicilian Mafia that other criminal groups are given the label. Giovanni Falcone, an anti-Mafia judge murdered by the Sicilian Mafia in 1992, objected to the conflation of the term "Mafia" with organized crime in general: