What is "farfanes"

Farfanes (sing. farfan) is the name given to a class of soldiers hailing mostly from the Christian Iberian kingdoms in the later Middle Ages fighting as mercenaries for the various Muslim dynasties of the Western Mediterranean. Farfanes fought following the European fashion, in dense formations of heavily armed men either on horseback or on foot under the command of a Christian European officer, the qadi. The phenomenon came to an end when the Christian mercenaries were repatriated in the 15th century. The patronym Farfán is still relatively common in 21st-century Spanish-speaking countries and may be linked to these families which came back from the Maghreb.