Salem Bouhageb

سالم بوحاجب

1827 CE · 1242 AH† – 14 July 1924 CE · 1342 AH †

† Hijri date derived by computation from the Gregorian/Julian date; it may differ from the transmitted date by a day or two.

Tunisian reformer, jurist and poet (1827–1924), born at Bembla and formed at the Zaytuna, who taught for some seventy years at the Zaytuna and the Khaldounia and numbered Béchir Sfar, Abdelaziz Thâalbi, Mohamed Nakhli and Mohamed Tahar Ben Achour among his students. A close collaborator of Kheireddine Pacha, he helped found the municipality of Tunis in 1857 and Sadiki College in 1875, worked on the application of the Fundamental Pact and on the 1906 Code of Obligations and Contracts, and ended his career as the country's chief Maliki mufti; the Friday sermons he renewed in content made him a pioneer of ijtihad in Tunisia.