This is a good read..quite informative. Language in the end is a very fluid thing.
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_22-6-2003_pg3_8
WORD For word: Khaled Ahmed
Mafia as a word was born in America and came into Urdu to describe the underworld of crime and contraband in Pakistan. In actual fact it is linked to many other Urdu words that we use every day. It comes from an Arabic root
The History Channel, telling the story of the American mafia, stated that the word mafia came from an Arabic root meaning safe place. My great Ernest Klein dictionary says “origin unknown”. So says the OUP.
My Catholic Encyclopaedia says Sicily was under Muslim rule from the 9th century AD. The first Arab invader was one called Ziadeth. But the great Fatimids of Egypt succeeded his family and in the 10th century, Sicily was a happy country.
In 948, the census showed 1.5 million Muslims and 1.2 million Christians living in Sicily. So when you have an area called Val Mazzara, it simply refers to valayat (unit of administration) for the purpose of taxation. It doesn’t refer to valley. The Muslim rule lasted till the 11th century.
In 1861, Garibaldi set off to Sicily to unify it with mainland Italy. When the Sacaren Tribe of Palermo heard of the impending invasion they fled to a set of caves in the Marsala region of Sicily. This set of caves was known as the mafie, and the Sacaren used the caves to hide from Garibaldi and his troops. Garibaldi proceeded to name the people hiding in the caves mafiosi.
Does mafioso come from an Arabic word? Some writers have chosen to accept the meaning bold. I can’t find an Arabic word sounding like mafioso meaning bold. But there is a root taking the locative “m” that is close.
The Arabic root is “hfz” and takes the locative “m” to create mehfooz (safe). If the Sacaren tribe ran up into the caves they made themselves mehfooz. If these caves were looked at as a refuge it is quite possible that the Arabs called them mehfooz (safe).
The Sacaren tribe could actually have taken their origin from saraken. We are told that after the Muslims were defeated in the 11th century all of them fled Sicily. It is possible that some did not and lived on as Christians. Muslim geographer al-Idrisi made his globe for the Christian ruler of Sicily, Roger the Third.
Sarakenos was the Greek way of saying Arab. It came from the Arabic word sharq (east) which is the word with which they must have described themselves. English Saracen (Arab) is from there. Is it possible that the people Garibaldi encountered as Sacaren in Sicily were actually sarakenos?
Arabic root “hfz” is most used in Urdu when we refer to persons who have learned the Quran by heart. Hafiz literally means guard, and in a way they guard the Quran by learning it by heart. The other often-used version is locative muhafiz which means guard too.
In the Quran, a verse says that Allah is guard of all things. From that is derived one of the 99 names of Allah. Hafeez means guard in that sense. It is also a popular Muslim name. Mehfooz (guarded) is also a popular name but it has nothing to do with the new criminal meaning given it by mafioso.
The abstract word tahhafuz means security and is often used as a military term although a more current term is salamati. A practical version is hifazat (protection). *