Banu Hilal and Banu Sulaim

Bedouin ethnic groups that migrated into North Africa. In the eleventh century the Banu Hilal and the Banu Sulaim, Arabic-speaking nomadic tribes originally from the central Arabian plateau, began to migrate westward from Upper Egypt to the land called Ifriqiya (present-day Tunisia and eastern Algeria). They settled in the regions now comprising Libya, Algeria, Tunisia, and later, Morocco. Historians mark the movement of the “Hilalians,” as they were collectively known, as a critical moment in the “Arabization” of North Africa. The migration of around 200,000 Bedouin herders reached places that had maintained distinct Berber identities even during the ... // 82% Remaining