Al-Sirah Al-Hilaliyyah, also known as Sirat Bani Hilal or Taghribat Bani Hilal, is the formal Arabic name for an oral poem, also known as the Hilali epic. It recounts the saga of the Bani Hilal Bedouin tribe and its migration from the Arabian Peninsula to North Africa in the tenth century.
One notable version contains 1,000,000 lines; the poet could sing this version for about 100 hours. A vast territory in central North Africa was ruled by the tribe for more than a century before it was wiped out by Moroccan rivals. As one of the major epic poems within the Arabic folk tradition, the Hilali is the only epic still performed in its integral musical form. It has disappeared from the Middle East, except in Egypt.
The epic was inspired by historic events. The Hilali leader, Abu Zayd al-Hilali, simply known as "Abu Zayd", is given an epic-styled birth: his mother, barren for eleven years, prays at a magic spring and invokes a black bird in hopes that the might become pregnant, saying "Give me a boy like this bird, / Black like this bird".
As a result of her request, her son is born with black skin, and therefore he and his mother are expelled from their tribe. In the Arab epic, black skin is a sure sign of service status, but since he is noble is a born warrior and outcast simultaneously. Before he can do that, he must defeat two enemies: Khatfa, a Jewish leader, and Handal, an evil Muslim king.
The Hilali epic has been performed by poets since the fourteenth century who sing the verses while playing a percussion instrument or two-string spike fiddle (rabab). The performances may last for days and take place at weddings, circumcision ceremonies, and private gatherings. Practitioners used to be trained in family circles, and the epic became their sole source of income.
The ten-year apprenticeships begins at the age of five for these professional poets. To this day, they undergo special training to teach memory skills and master their instruments. They must also learn to inject improvisational commentary into their plots in order to make them more relevant for a contemporary audience.
Due to competition from contemporary media and the diminishing number of young people able to commit to the long training process, the number of Hilali Epic performers is dwindling. Due to the lucrative Egyptian tourism industry, poets tend to abandon the full repertory in favor of excerpts incorporated into folklore shows.