Shaykh 'Abd al-Hamid Ben Badis (1889-1940) was the leader of the Islamic Reform Movement in Algeria between the two world wars. At a time when highly visible Algerian politicians were advocating Algeria's assimilation into France, Ben Badis and his followers vigorously affirmed the cultural and historical distinctness of the Algerian nation.

'Abd al-Hamid Ben Badis was born in 1889 at Constantine, which was the cultural and commercial capital of eastern Algeria. Both his father and grandfather held high offices in the French colonial administration and one of his brothers was a French-educated lawyer. But 'Abd al-Hamid chose a different path. After a private traditional education in Algeria, he enrolled at the venerable Zaytuna mosque university in Tunis, where he completed his studies in 1911. Subsequently he made the pilgrimage to Mecca and visited several major Middle Eastern cities.

In the Arab East and in Tunisia, Ben Badis was progressively won...