Beni Ḥassān

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For the Egyptian village, see Beni Hasan.

Beni Ḥassān (Arabic: بني حسان "sons of Ḥassān") was a Bedouin group, one of several Yemeni Maqil Arab tribes who emigrated in the Middle Ages to northwest Africa and present-day Western Sahara and Mauritania. They were preceded in much the same manner by the more well-known Bani Hilal Arabs.

The Beni Hassan and other warrior Arab tribes managed to establish their dominance over the Sanhaja Berber tribes of the area, and after the Char Bouba war of the 17th century. As a result, Arab culture and language came to dominate, and the Berber tribes were more or less arabized. The Bani Hassan's dialect of Arabic thus became the tongue of the region, and is still spoken in the form of Hassaniya Arabic.

Beni Hassan claim to be descendants of their ancestor Maqil, once living in Tunisia. This Maqil had two sons Suhair and Mohammed. This Mohammed was the father of Muhtar, who was the father of Sabbana and Hassan, the Hassan from which the Beni Hassan took their name. Many descendants of the Beni Hassan tribes today still adhere to the supremacist ideology of their ancestors. This ideology has led to oppression, discrimination and even enslavement of other groups in the region of Western Sahara.[1]

The is also a Beni Hassan tribe in Jordan whose territory stretches to Al Mafraq, Hamamah, Zarqa, and Irbid.

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  1. ^ *AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL, 7 November 2002, MAURITANIA, "A future free from slavery?" The formal abolition of slavery in 1981 has not led to real and effective abolition for various reasons, including a lack of legislation to ensure its implementation. http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/engAFR380032002!Open
    • http://www.afrol.com/articles/17518 : "The practice of slavery in Mauritania is most dominant within the traditional upper class of the Moors. For centuries, the so-called Haratin lower class, mostly poor black Africans living in rural areas, have been considered natural slaves by these Moors. Social attitudes have changed among most urban Moors, but in rural areas, the ancient divide is still very alive.
    There have been many attempts to assess the real extension of slavery in modern Mauritania, but these have mostly been frustrated by the Nouakchott government's official stance that the practice has been eliminated. In 1994, Amnesty International claimed that 90,000 Blacks still live as "property" of their master. The further estimated that some 300,000 freed slaves continued to serve their former masters because of psychological or economic dependence."


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