Habib Bourguiba on 8 April, in the afternoon, in his mausoleum. After a short ceremony at the Hanafi Mosque of Bourguiba, his body was transported on a gun carriage, coated with the national flag and carried by a military vehicle framed by detachments of the Tunisian army. Among the foreign guests were French President Jacques Chirac, Algerian Bouteflika, Palestinian Yasser Arafat and Egyptian Hosni Mubarak. After the burial, President Ben Ali pronounced a eulogy in which he paid a tribute to the "Loyal and devoted fight" of Bourguiba for Tunisia. The funeral conditions were, however, submitted to the criticism of international media
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