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 | 4,000,000 (1573) |
| Branches | |
| Language | Arabic |
| Religion | Shia Islam (originally) Sunni Islam (later) |
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. 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 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 and 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.