Banu Hilal
| 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 | 920,250 (16th century) |
| Branches | |
| Language | Arabic |
| Religion | Shia Islam (originally) Sunni Islam (later) |
The Banu Hilal (Arabic: بنو هلال, romanized: Banū Hilāl) is an Arab tribe from the Najd region of the central Arabian Peninsula that a portion of emigrated to the Maghreb region of North Africa in the 11th century. They ruled the Najd and campaigned in the borderlands between Iraq and Syria. When the Fatimid Caliphate became the rulers of Egypt and the founders of Cairo in 969, they confined the Bedouin in the south before sending them to Central North Africa (Libya, Tunisia and Algeria) and then to Morocco.
Historians estimate the total number of Arab nomads who migrated to the Maghreb in the 11th century to be 500,000 to 700,000 to 1,000,000. Historian Mármol Carvajal states that more than a million Arabs migrated to the Maghreb in the 11th century, an estimation that he attributes to Ibn Al-Raquiq, who died 2 decades before the migration.In the 19th century, Ernest Carette estimates that the total population of Hilalians during the 16th century was 920,250, an estimation he made using the accounts of Mármol Carvajal.