Tayeb el-Oqbi

Tayeb el-Oqbi (about 1890–1961) was an Algerian Muslim scholar and journalist, a founding member of the Association of Algerian Muslim Ulama and one of the best-known reform preachers of colonial Algeria.¹²

In his own autobiography, quoted by the Arabic article, el-Oqbi gives his birth at Sidi Okba near Biskra as the night of mid-Shawwal 1307 AH — about June 1890 — adding that it may have been a year later, as no birth record exists.² He moved with his family to the Hijaz at the age of five or six, studied religious sciences at the Prophet ﷺ's Mosque in Medina, and then in Mecca became an adviser to Sharif Hussein, who put him in charge of the reformist newspaper al-Qibla.¹ Suspected by the Young Turks for his pan-Islamic and pan-Arab articles, he was placed under house arrest in Anatolia during the First World War and freed through the intervention of his friend Shakib Arslan.¹

Back in Algeria in 1920, he preached in cafés and other public places, fought illiteracy, and campaigned against the excesses of some maraboutic Sufi confréries, drawing colonial surveillance.¹ From 1929 he presided over the Cercle du Progrès in Algiers, a gathering point of the reform associations, and in 1931 he joined Ben Badis and others in founding the Association of Algerian Muslim Ulama; in 1933 the colonial authorities forbade him to preach in mosques.¹ Arrested in 1936 after the assassination of the mufti Bendali, he was acquitted at his trial in June 1939, a case Albert Camus reported in the francophone press.¹ During the Second World War he opposed Vichy's discriminatory measures against Jews and issued a fatwa forbidding their murder and the confiscation of their property.¹ He founded his own newspaper, El-Islah, and wrote for the Association's al-Shihab and al-Basa'ir.¹²

The Arabic article and Wikidata date his death to 21 May 1961; the French article gives May 1960 and marks the place of death unknown.²³¹ The French article adds that a large crowd attended his funeral.¹

• French Wikipedia, "Tayeb el-Oqbi".¹
• Arabic Wikipedia, "الطيب العقبي".²
• Wikidata, Q617525.³