Tahar Haddad (Arabic: الطاهر الحداد; 1899 – December 1935) was a Tunisian author, trade unionist, socialist, scholar and reformer.[1]
Haddad was born in Tunis to a family of shopkeepers and studied Islamic law at the Great Mosque of Zitouna from 1911 until his graduation in 1920.[2] He became a notary, and he abandoned his career to join Al-Destour, which was the first major political party spearheading the Tunisian national movement. In the following years, he became a prominent member in the burgeoning Tunisian labor movement, and he quickly became a leading spokesperson for the movement. He left the Destour party when he became dissatisfied with the leadership, particularly the party's negative attitude towards the labor movement.[3][4]
Haddad was a key figure in the early Tunisian Labor movement, which had emerged as a reaction to the French labor movement's reluctance to defend the interests of indigenous Tunisian workers and was active for over a decade. However, Haddad would later be known first and foremost as a pioneering Tunisian feminist.[1]