As I began reading up on Italy in preparation for my summer vacation, I learned that Muslim armies invaded the island of Sicily throughout the 800s and 900s A.D., eventually conquering the island and setting up the Emirate of Sicily. The emirate endured from approximately 965 to 1072. During this time period, the Arabs who settled in Sicily renamed the city of Cunigghiuni, calling it Qurlayun. The town has retained this name, which is rendered in Italian and in English as Corleone. Movie buffs remember this as the surname of the mafia don played by Marlon Brando in The Godfather. Fans of the film may also remember that members of the Corleone family pay visits to the city of Corleone periodically during the movie.
While the Sicilan mafia did not achieve national and international fame (or infamy) until the 19th and 20th centuries, the structure of their "business organizations" has existed for centuries. In the mafia, families join into larger clans which then form an even larger "Family" [such as the Coreleone Family]. For this reason, it can be argued that the Sicilians mafia borrowed their organizational structure from the structure of the Arab tribes that conquered Sicily. Now let me pause here to emphasize that I'm not at all saying that the Arabs taught the Sicilians about crime. What I am saying is that the Sicilians may have taken an innocuous social structure and adapted it for their own (criminal) purposes. In the Arab model, families form clans, which then form tribes. This is different from the pattern in most European countries where "tribes" don't really exist.
So where would the Sicilian mafia be without the Arabs teaching them about family?
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