Banu Sulaym

Banu Sulaym banner at the Battle of Siffin

The Banu Sulaym (Arabic: بنو سليم) was a group of Nomadic Arabs. In the 11th century they migrated from Upper Egypt into what is now Tunisia and eastern Algeria. They defeated the Berbers.

History

Oral tradition says that the tribe would have left Arabia to go to Egypt. According to their legend they rebelled against the Caliph of Baghdad in the second half of the 10th century. In 1049, when the Zirid ruler of Tunisia rebelled against Egypt, nomads were sent to punish them. Ibn Khaldun, an early Tunisian historian, said they were like "a cloud of locusts" when they invaded Tunisia. The Arab poets told of their many conquests as they moved west. They were defeated in a series of battles during the 12th century by the Almohads in Algeria at the Battle of Sétif. Even though it was an oral history, they were a real tribe. They did come from the Arabian Peninsula. They did control much of North Africa for over a century. They were mostly installed in the south of Tunisia and Libya as well as a minority in the south of Algeria and the Moroccan plains.

Further reading

References

  1. ↑ Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, eds. Anthony Appiah; Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Second Edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 360
  2. ↑ Allen James Fromherz, Ibn Khaldun: Life and Times (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, ©2010), p. 142
  3. ↑ Medieval Islamic Civilization; an Encyclopedia, Vol. 1, eds. Josef W. Meri; Jere L. Bacharach (New York; Oxford: Routledge, 2006), p. 231
  4. 1 2 3 Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature, Volume 1, eds. Julie Scott Meisami; Paul Starkey (London; New York: Routledge, 2003), p. 133
  5. 1 2 3 4 Epic Traditions in the Contemporary World, The Poetics of Community, eds. Margaret Beissinger; Jane Tylus; Susanne Wofford (Berkeley; Los Angeles; Oxford: The University of California Press, 1999), p. 156

Other websites