Heib

The Heib, or Banu Hayb, were an Arab Bedouin tribal line of Barqa in eastern Libya. They belonged to the Banu Sulaym confederation, which moved west from Egypt in the Hilalian migration of the eleventh century. Their two main branches were the Shammakh and the Labid, while the chieftaincy over all the Hayb groups rested with the Banu Izzaz, known as the Izza.

In the fourteenth century they were the dominant tribesmen of Barqa under loose Mamluk suzerainty. Sultan al-Nasir Muhammad launched expeditions against them between 1319 and 1325 to enforce payment of the zakat on flocks and harvests, and a commander named Fayid led the Barqa Arabs on the sultan's behalf until his death in 1346.

Later the chieftaincy passed to Arif ibn Amr and then to his son Amr, whom the Egyptian encyclopedist al-Qalqashandi still found holding Barqa early in the fifteenth century.