Early life of Habib Bourguiba married Moufida and searched for a job as a lawyer, to provide the needs of family. He quickly started a journalistic career in order to defend the Tunisian personality. Bourguiba's paternal family originated from the Ottoman Empire nobility. In Albanian, Bourguiba meant "prisoner". The family lived in Istanbul before leaving the city for the Sirte coast in Libya. In 1795, the great-grandfather of Habib Bourguiba, Hadj Mohamed Bourguiba Al Kebir, left Tripolitania to settle in Tunisia, because of the eruption of troubles between Libya and the Ottoman Empire. Therefore, he moved to Monastir, in the "Tripolitanian quarter" with his family,
Early life of Habib Bourguiba on the very night he got back home, in 1865. When he left the army, France had just taken full control over the country, with the signature of the Bardo Treaty on May 12, 1881 and the Conventions of La Marsa of June 8, 1883, which established the French protectorate with the approval of Sadok Bey. One year before its establishment, Ali Bourguiba, who was 30 years old, married Fattouma Khefacha, daughter of Ahmed Khefacha and Khadouja Mzali, which linked the Bourguiba family to the Mzali one (family of Habib Bourguiba's future prime minister Mohamed Mzali). Impoverished, the family was