Ali Bach Hamba

Ali Bach Hamba (1876–1918) was a Tunisian journalist and politician, a founder of the Tunisian national movement and of the Young Tunisians, and founder of the newspaper Le Tunisien in 1907.¹

He was born in Tunis in 1876 into a well-off family of Turkish origin; his father was an aide of the minister Mustafa ben Ismail.¹ He was educated at Sadiki College, then took a law licence at the University of Paris.¹² He first worked in charge of real estate and habous property, before moving to practise law.¹ (The English article instead gives him a master's and then a doctorate in law at Aix-Marseille University.)³

He became active in 1906 in the Sadiki College alumni association, becoming one of its leaders alongside Béchir Sfar.¹ On 7 February 1907 he founded the French-language weekly Le Tunisien and edited it, publishing the Young Tunisians' programme in its first issue.¹ Abdelaziz Thâalbi joined the movement in 1909, and it acquired a religious as well as a constitutional character, with an Arabic as well as a French edition of Le Tunisien.³ After the events of 1911 and the Tunis tram boycott of 1912, the government declared a political plot and exiled Bach Hamba and Thâalbi.³ His brother Mohamed Bach Hamba edited the Revue du Maghreb.³

He died in Istanbul on 29 October 1918, and is buried in the Jellaz cemetery in Tunis.¹²

• Arabic Wikipedia, "Ali Bach Hamba".¹
• English Wikipedia, "Ali Bach Hamba".³
• French Wikipedia, "Ali Bach Hamba".²
• Wikidata, Q2836120.⁴