Beni Hassan
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- For the Egyptian village, see Beni Hasan.
Beni Hassan (Arabic: بني حسن "son of Hassan" - also transliterated Bani Hasan) 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 superiority over the Sanhaja Berber tribes of the area, and after the Char Bouba war of the 17th century, these were forced to submit to either semi-sedentary agriculture and fishing, or to practice religious scholarship (marabout and zawiya tribes). 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 are said to be descendants of Hasan ibn Ali, the son of Ali ibn Abi Talib, the Prophet Mohammad's cousin and a main figure in Shi'a Islam. However, the Beni Hassan are Sunni Muslims.
It is also the name of the largest tribe in Jordan; accounting for about 10% of the Jordanian population.
