Abdelhamid Ben Badis (Arabic: عبد الحميد بن باديس;Also: Ben Badis) was born on December 4, 1889 at 16:00. His birth was recorded the following day, Thursday December 5, 1889, at the register of births, lived and died in Constantine, a city in the North-East of Algeria. Sheikh Ben Badis was an emblematic figure of the Islamic Reform movement in Algeria. Albelhamid Ben Badis was of an old town middle-class family which claimed descent from the Zirids, a Berber Muslim dynasty founded in the 10th Century by Bologhine ibn Ziri.
In 1931 Ben Badis founded the Association of Muslim Algerian Ulema. This was a national grouping of many Islamic scholars in Algeria from many different and sometimes opposing perspectives and viewpoints. The Association would be a great influence on Algerian Muslim Politics up to the Algerian War of Independence. In the same period it set up many institutions where thousands of Algerian children of Muslim parents were educated. The association also published a monthly magazine, the Al-Chihab and Ben Badis contributed regularly to it between 1925 and his death in 1940. The magazine informed its readers of the associations ideas and thoughts on religious reform and spoke on other religious and political issues. Ben Badis died on April 16, 1940 in Constantine.