21 Facts About Salah Farhat

Salah Farhat was a Tunisian politician who was a founder of the Constitutional Liberal Party after having campaigned in the Young Tunisians Movement.

Salah Farhat was active in the struggle for independence and retired from politics once Independence was achieved.

Salah Farhat comes from a rich Mameluk family of Greek origin.

Salah Farhat enrolled high school Carnot in Tunis where he passed the French baccalaureat in 1914; he took Arabic lessons at the University of the Zitouna.

Salah Farhat obtained a law degree from the Faculty of Algiers in 1917.

Salah Farhat worked as an interpreter until war at the Bar of Tunis in 1919.

Salah Farhat specialized in land law, to safeguard Tunisian agricultural property against colonization, and in criminal law, to defend the causes of nationalists.

Salah Farhat formally denies any link between Destour and communism in several newspaper articles.

In 1923, at the departure of Abdelaziz Thaalbi, founder of Destour, in exile, Salah Farhat became deputy for Ahmed Safi as secretary general.

In 1935, after the death of Ahmed Safi, Salah Farhat was elected Secretary General of Destour, and later the president of Destour.

Salah Farhat seconded Thaalbi upon his return to Tunisia in 1937 for the reunification of the national movement and the formation of a common front against colonialism.

Salah Farhat supported his interventions, visits, letters, articles, and telegrams of protest, Moncefisme and this Bey patriot and martyr during his exile from May 14,1943, to September 1,1948, the date of his death in Pau, France.

Aware of his unwavering loyalty and his veneration for his person, Moncef Bey maintained numerous correspondence with Salah Farhat approving his struggle, encouraging him in the defense of Monasticism and recommending him to work for national unity against colonialism.

On October 30,1944,17 Tunisian personalities, including Salah Farhat, representing the different nationalist tendencies signed the Tunisian Charter.

In 1947, for the constitution of a Tunisian Government, Salah Farhat refused to believe that there was no guarantee of achieving independence; in 1951, he reiterated his refusal to be part of the new team, the second Chenik Ministry for the same reasons.

In 1955, Salah Farhat opposed the talks on internal autonomy and the Franco-Tunisian Conventions which risk linking the fate of Tunisia to that of France, and including it with the French Union affirms again that the only acceptable claim is the country's total independence.

Salah Farhat actively participates in the political life of the country through direct contacts with grassroots activists, unions, and workers by creating destourian cells in the most remote regions of the country.

Salah Farhat is loyal to the Destour program and the stage policy launched by his predecessors, and will remain loyal to him when he takes over the leadership of the party.

On September 18,1926, Salah Farhat married Kalthoum Khaznadar, sister of Chedly Khaznadar, a nationalist poet and one of the tenors of Destour.

Salah Farhat's poems are admired by Tunisian foreign literary and artistic circles which he frequented assiduously.

Salah Farhat died at the age of 84, on March 18,1979, in his villa in the Kram and rests in the cemetery of Sidi Abdelaziz in La Marsa, facing the sea.