Beni Ḥassan is a Bedouin Arab tribe which inhabits Western Sahara, Mauritania, Morocco and Algeria. It is one of the four sub-tribes of the Beni Maqil who emigrated in the 11th century from South Arabia to the Maghreb with the Bani Hilal and Banu Sulaym Arab tribes. In the 13th century, they took the Sanhaja territories in the southwest of the Sahara. In Morocco, they first settled, alongside their Maqil relatives, in the area between Tadla and the Moulouya River. The Sous Almohad governor called upon them for help against a rebellion in the Sous, and they resettled in and around that region. They later moved to Mauritania, and from the 16th century onwards, they managed to push back all black Mauritanians southwards to the Senegal Valley river. The Beni Hassan and other warrior Arab tribes dominated the Sanhaja Berber tribes of the area after the Char Bouba war of the 17th century. As a result, Arabs became the dominant ethnic group in Western Sahara and Mauretania. The Bani Hassan dialect of Arabic became used in the region and is still spoken, in the form of Hassaniya Arabic. The hierarchy established by the Beni Hassan tribe gave Mauritania much of its sociological character. That ideology has led to oppression, discrimination and even enslavement of other groups in Mauritania.

Western Sahara is a disputed territory on the northwest coast of Africa. About 20% of the territory is controlled by the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR); the remaining 80% is occupied and administered by neighboring Morocco. It has a surface area of 266,000 square kilometres (103,000 sq mi). It is the second most sparsely populated country in the world and most sparsely in Africa, mainly consisting of desert flatlands. The population is estimated at about 500,000, of which nearly 40% live in Morocco-controlled Laayoune, the largest city in Western Sahara.