Abdelaziz Thâalbi

Abdelaziz Thâalbi (1876–1944) was a Tunisian political and religious leader, one of the few who combined the political and the religious in his work; he founded the Destour party, wrote La Tunisie martyre, and campaigned against the French protectorate until his death.¹

He was born in Tunis on 15 Sha'ban 1293 AH / 5 September 1876 (the Arabic article's lead misprints 1874) into a family of Algerian origin that had moved to Tunis after the French occupation of Algeria in 1830; his father was a notary.¹² He entered the Zaytuna, graduated with the tatwi' certificate, and continued his studies at the Khaldounia.¹ The English article says he became learned in Salafiyyah at the Zaytuna and that after graduating in 1895 he began publishing a religious journal, Sabil al-Rashid ("the proper path").²

The French suspended Sabil al-Rashid in 1897, and Thâalbi left Tunisia, travelling in Libya, Egypt and India and spending at least two years in Egypt moving with disciples of Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and Muhammad Abduh.² Returning in 1901, he openly criticised maraboutism and advocated a rationalistic reading of the Qur'an; in 1904 he was tried for cursing Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani and calling the Qur'an an obsolete book, and was convicted and sentenced to two months in prison.² In 1905 he published L'esprit libéral du Coran ("the liberal spirit of the Quran") with his defence lawyer César Benattar and el-Hadi Sebai.² He joined the Young Tunisians and became editor of their Arabic newspaper, until he was expelled from Tunisia in 1912 following the tram boycott.²

After the First World War he returned to Tunisia and in 1920 wrote La Tunisie martyre ("the martyr Tunisia"), demanding restoration of the 1861 constitution, an elected assembly, an independent judiciary, improved education and better protection of civil rights; he was arrested and returned to Tunisia.² In 1921 he led the foundation of the Destour party on the book's policies.² He left the country in 1923 under growing French pressure, spent his exile years moving between Egypt, Iraq, India and Palestine, and returned to Tunisia in 1937 to find the Destour eclipsed by the Neo Destour.²¹

He died in Tunis on 1 October 1944.²³

• Arabic Wikipedia, "Abdelaziz Thâalbi".¹
• English Wikipedia, "Abdelaziz Thâalbi".²
• French Wikipedia, "Abdelaziz Thâalbi".⁴
• Urdu Wikipedia, "Abdelaziz Thâalbi".⁵
• Wikidata, Q646778.³