Shaykh Hilal

Shaykh Hilal (Arabic: الشيخ هلال, romanized: al-Shaykh Hilāl) is a village in central Syria administratively part of al-Saan Subdistrict of the Salamiyah District of the Hama Governorate. It is located 95 kilometers (59 mi) east of Hama and 55 kilometers (34 mi) north of Salamiyah. It is the center of the Shaykh Hilal Municipality, which also incorporates the neighboring villages and hamlets of Rasm Amun, Rasm al-Tina, Rawida, Hasu al-Qiblawi, Hanita and Maksar al-Janubi. As of 2009, all the village lands of Shaykh Hilal were owned by the municipality, with no private plots, though the local government signaled it was beginning the process of selling plots to the residents.

According to the Syria Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), Shaykh Hilal had a population of 834 in the 2004 census. Around 1995 around half of the village's 1,200 inhabitants had emigrated due to the government ban that year on farming in the desert in its effort to counter desertification.