Taghribat Bani Hilal (تغريبة بني هلال, also known as Sirat Abu Zeid Al Hilali سيرة ابي زيد الهلالي) is an Arabic epic recounting the Banu Hilal's journey from Najd to Tunisia via Egypt and conquest of the latter. It is built around historical events that took place in the 11th century. The epic is folkloric and oral, not having been committed to writing until relatively recent times, and doesn't have a well-defined date of creation. It was declared one of Mankind's Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity by the UNESCO in 2003.
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The event of Taghribat Bani Hilal has a basis in history, when Tunisia broke away from the Fatimid empire in the 11th century.
A famine hit Egypt for seven years; a similar famine hit Arabia, and entire tribes moved with their families and animals from there to Egypt in search of food and pasture. AsAl-Mustansir of Cairo, the Fatimid Caliph in Egypt, did not have enough resources to retake Tunisia, he directed the tribes from Arabia to take Tunisia on his behalf.
In that way no financial or human resources needed to be put in by Egypt direct, nor would they support the Banu Hilal. If inhabitants of oases between Egypt and Tunisia became angry, their anger would not be directed at al-Mustansir.
This crude political act had two major effects, one cultural, and the other literary.
As a result of Arabic-speaking tribes settling Tunisia, this region became mainly Arabic speaking, and not Berber.
The epic was inspired by these historic events.
In it the Hilali leader Abu Zayd al-Hilali's rival is Khalifa al-Zanati, the hero of the tribe of Zenata. The war between the Arab Banu Hilal and the Berber Zenata is the main theme of the Sira named after Abu Zeid. Another character featured in the epic is Shehta (شحتة).
The Sira was initially carried orally and handed down from generation to generation often in poem form via bards and then recorded later in many variants.
The Egyptian poet and writer Abdel Rahman el-Abnudi has made an exhaustive collection of the Sira, travelling from Egypt to Libya to Tunisia to document the variants of the epic.
The epic was narrated by storytellers in cafés well into the 20th century, much like the Baibars biography.