Banu Hilal

The Banu Hilal (Arabic: بنو هلال, romanized: Banū Hilāl) is an Arab tribe from the Najd region of the central Arabian Peninsula. 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 50,000 to 250,000, although some scholars have proposed substantially higher estimates.