Banu Hilal
The Banu Hilal (Arabic: بنو هلال, romanized: Banū Hilāl) was a confederation of Arab tribes from the Najd region of the central Arabian Peninsula that emigrated to the Maghreb region of North Africa in the 11th century. Masters of the vast plateaux of the Najd, they enjoyed a somewhat infamous reputation, possibly owing to their relatively late (for the Arabian tribes) conversion to Islam and accounts of their campaigns in the borderlands between Iraq and Syria. When the Fatimid Caliphate became the rulers of Egypt and the founders of Cairo in 969, they hastened to confine the unruly Bedouin in the south before sending them to Central North Africa (Libya, Tunisia and Algeria) and then to Morocco.
| Banu Hilal بنو هلال | |
|---|---|
| Qaysi Arab tribe | |
| Ethnicity | Arab |
| Nisba | al-Hilālī |
| Location | Najd (origin), Maghreb, Egypt |
| Descended from | Hilal bin 'Amir bin Sa'sa bin Mu'awiya bin Bakr bin Hawazin |
| Parent tribe | Banu 'Amir |
| Population | 4,000,000 (1573) |
| Branches |
|
| Language | Arabic |
| Religion | Shia Islam (originally) Sunni Islam (later) |
Historians estimate the total number of Arab nomads who migrated to the Maghreb in the 11th century to be to 500,000 to 700,000 to 1,000,000. Historian Mármol Carvajal estimated that more than a million Hilalians migrated to the Maghreb between 1051-1110, and estimated that the Hilalian population in the Maghreb at his time in 1573 was at 4,000,000 individuals, excluding other Arab tribes and other Arabs already present.