The Legend of Abu Zayd al-Hilali
- Date of account
- Medieval-to-early-modern oral epic; written and printed witnesses before 1800
- Location
- Arabian Peninsula, Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Libya and the Maghreb
- Source
- model_recalled_reference
- Record updated
- 2026-10-10
Record summary
The Sirat Bani Hilal preserves the legendary history of the Hilali migration from Arabia toward North Africa, centering on Abu Zayd al-Hilali and other heroic figures. Performers transmitted the cycle orally in regional Arabic forms, while manuscripts and later printings vary in structure and emphasis. The epic is useful for studying how migration memory, genealogy, warfare, romance and regional identity become mythologized. Medieval historical movements provide context, but the poem’s episodes and chronology are not a transparent record of the eleventh-century migration or of a single historical Abu Zayd.
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