The article aims to contribute to a wider knowledge of the Hilâl epic, a masterwork of popular Arabic literature that tells the story of a nomadic pastoral people from the Arabian deserts. The focus is on the ‘Taghrîba’ cycle, which relates the migration in the 11th century of these Sons of Hilâl to Ifrîqiyya, present-day Tunisia. In this context reference is made to the political act of the Fatimid power that launched the Hilalians on the conquest of Ifrîqiyya, as well (...) as to historians’ and linguists’ perception of it. But interest is centred more on the texts, which are copiously quoted, their poetic quality and their message – the expression of a tribal humanism, composed of grandeur and human dignity, particular to those desert people. (shrink)