Houari Boumediene (1932-1978) was an Algerian revolutionary and military leader who won power by a military coup and led Algeria during a turbulent period after nearly 8 years of war.

Houari Boumediene was born on Aug. 23, 1932, into a poor peasant family in Clauzel near Guelma in eastern Algeria. His real name was Mohammed Ben Brahim Bou Kharouba, but in 1957 he adopted the name he later used as a nom de guerre. He derived it from the names of two western Algerian patron saints venerated by the population of Tlemcen and Oran, whom he helped organize for the revolutionary war.

Until the age of 14, Boumediene attended French and Koranic schools in Guelma, then went on to a conservative Moslem religious school in Constantine. When the French called him to serve in the colonial army in 1952, he fled to Tunis and then moved to Cairo, where he studied at al-Azhar University...