Tunisia Law Enacted 1956-08-13

Code of Personal Status (Majalla)

مجلة الأحوال الشخصية

Summary

Promulgated on 13 August 1956, months after independence, by Habib Bourguiba's Neo-Destour government. In a single instrument it abolished polygamy, replaced repudiation with judicial divorce available to both spouses, set a minimum marriage age, required the mutual consent of both parties, and ended forced marriage — the most far-reaching reform of Muslim family law in the Arab world.

Impact

A defining secular-modernist act by a party born from an Islamic-nationalist independence movement: it gave Tunisian women among the most advanced legal rights in the region and anchored the regime's "state feminism." It bears on the civil-liberties/gender and secularism axes and remains the benchmark against which later debates (the Islamist Ennahda era, the 2018 inheritance-equality fight) are measured.

Parties involved

Socialist Destourian Party (Neo-Destour)

Sources

Permalink https://tarekgara.com/tayyar/bills/b9748b39-08f9-4d0b-a064-83692ad77f88

How to cite

This is a citation for the legislation itself — credited to Assembly of the Representatives of the People (Tunisia) and dated to its 1956 introduction. Tayyar is the retrieval surface, not the author. A separate "Retrieved via" line records that you accessed it through this dataset.

In-text: (Assembly of the Representatives of the People (Tunisia), 1956)

APA 7Institutional author

Assembly of the Representatives of the People (Tunisia). (1956). Code of Personal Status (Majalla) [Legislation]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Personal_Status_in_Tunisia. Retrieved via Tayyar (https://tarekgara.com/tayyar/bills/b9748b39-08f9-4d0b-a064-83692ad77f88) on July 27, 2026.

Chicago author-dateCommon in political-science journals

Assembly of the Representatives of the People (Tunisia). 1956. “Code of Personal Status (Majalla).” Legislation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Personal_Status_in_Tunisia. Retrieved via Tayyar, July 27, 2026.

BibTeXLaTeX / Zotero / reference managers

@misc{tayyar-bill-b9748b39-08f9-4d0b-a064-83692ad77f88,
  title     = {{Code of Personal Status (Majalla)}},
  author    = {{Assembly of the Representatives of the People (Tunisia)}},
  year      = {1956},
  date      = {1956-08-13},
  type      = {Legislation},
  url       = {https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Personal_Status_in_Tunisia},
  urldate   = {2026-07-27},
  note      = {Retrieved via Tayyar (https://tarekgara.com/tayyar/bills/b9748b39-08f9-4d0b-a064-83692ad77f88) on July 27, 2026}
}