Banu Hilal

÷The Banu Hilal (Arabic: بنو هلال or الهلاليين) was a confederation of Arab tribes from the Hejaz and Najd regions of the Arabian Peninsula that emigrated to North Africa in the 11th century. Masters of the vast plateaus of Najd, they had a very bad reputation. Recent converts to Islam at the time of their migration, they were known for their depredations on the borders of Iraq and Syria. With the revolutionary movement of the Ismaili Qarmatians in Bahrain and Oman, they participated in the pillage of Mecca in 930 in their fight against the Fatimids. When the latter became masters of Egypt and the founders of Cairo in 969, they hastened to confine the unruly Bedouin in the south before sending them to the Maghreb.

Origin

According to Ibn Khaldun, the Banu Hilal were accompanied by their wives and their children when they came to the Maghreb. They settled in North Africa after repeatedly winning battles against the Berbers, eventually going on to co-habitate with the Berber tribes. Ibn Khaldun described their genealogy, which consisted of two mother tribes: themselves and the Banu Sulaym. They lived on the Ghazwan near Taif while the Banu Sulaym attended nearby Medina, sharing a common cousin in the Al Yas branch of the Quraysh tribe. At the time of their migration, Banu Hilal comprised six families: Athbadj, Riyah, Jochem, Addi, Zughba, and Rbia. Today, it is almost impossible to trace a purely Arab lineage due to intermarriage between Arabs and Berbers, though some historians have attempted to do so within the context of Maghrebian society and Greater Maghreb.