Abdelhamid Ben Badis

Abdelhamid Ben Badis was a Muslim scholar and reformer from Constantine. From 1931 until his death in 1940 he was president of the Association of Algerian Muslim Ulema. He was born in Constantine on 4 December 1889, into a well-known family, and died there on 16 April 1940.

Ben Badis had learned the whole Qur'an by heart by the age of 13, and the scholar Hamdan Lounissi was among his teachers.

From 1908 he studied at the Zitouna, the great mosque university of Tunis. After his pilgrimage to Mecca, around 1913, he returned to Constantine and taught in its mosques, including Sidi Qammouche and the Great Mosque.

In 1925 the scholar started the newspaper Al Muntaqid, then Ash Shihab, which appeared until 1939. On 5 May 1931 the Association of Algerian Muslim Ulema was founded in Algiers, with Ben Badis as its president. Its motto was "Islam is our religion, Arabic is our language, Algeria is our homeland".

The association opened schools across Algeria to teach Arabic and religion. In 1936 Ben Badis also played an important part in the Algerian Muslim Congress.

Since 1976 Algeria has marked the anniversary of his death as Youm el Ilm, the Day of Knowledge. The University of Mostaganem and the Great Mosque of Oran bear his name. On 16 April 2024 his personal library was given to Djamaa El Djazair, the Great Mosque of Algiers.