At a glance
Era 11- Dates
- 1889-1940 CE
- Who
- Algerian scholar who kept Islam and Arabic alive under French rule
- Era
- Colonialism & Renewal
ProfileAbdelhamid Ibn Badis
Abdelhamid Ibn Badis was born in Constantine in 1889 and studied at the Zaytuna in Tunis. Back in Algeria, he gave his life to teaching, convinced that education was the answer to French rule.
He taught the Quran and Arabic in mosques and schools and stressed the education of girls, saying that teaching a boy teaches one person, while teaching a girl teaches a nation. In 1930, when France celebrated a hundred years in Algeria, he answered that the Algerian nation was not France and did not want to be. In 1931 he founded the Association of Algerian Muslim Ulama, which built schools across the country.
He died in Constantine in 1940, aged forty-nine. His motto, "Islam is our religion, Arabic is our language, Algeria is our homeland", was recited by schoolchildren, and Algeria won its independence in 1962.
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