Mohammed Harbi, born on June 16, 1933, in El Harrouch near Skikda (Algeria) and died on January 1, 2026, in Paris, was a former high-ranking Algerian civil servant, historian, and academic, specializing in the political life and history of Algeria, and a former member of the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN). Following Houari Boumédiène's coup d'état, he was imprisoned from 1965 to 1968, placed under house arrest by the Algerian authorities in 1971, and escaped to France in 1973. Drawing on his insider knowledge of the nationalist movement, he explored its driving forces and intricacies to develop the historiography of Algerian nationalism.
