About Beji Caid Essebsi
Beji Caid Essebsi (or es-Sebsi; Arabic: الباجي قائد السبسي, romanized: al-Bājī Qā’id as-Sibsī,; 29 November 1926 – 25 July 2019) was a Tunisian politician who served as the fourth president of Tunisia from 2014 until his death in 2019. Previously, he served as minister of foreign affairs from 1981 to 1986 and prime minister from February to December 2011. Essebsi's political career spanned six decades, culminating in his leadership of Tunisia in its transition to democracy. Essebsi was the founder of the Nidaa Tounes political party, which won a plurality in the 2014 parliamentary election. In December 2014, he won the first regular presidential election following the Tunisian Revolution, becoming Tunisia's first democratically elected president. == Early life == Born in 1926, in Sidi Bou Said to an elite family originally from Sardinia (Italy), he was the great-grandson of Ismail Caïd Essebsi, a Sardinian kidnapped by Barbary corsairs in the Beylik of Tunis along the coasts of the island at the beginning of the nineteenth century, who then became a mamluk leader (he was raised with the ruling family after converting to Islam and was later recognized as a free man when he became an important member of the government). == Political career == Essebsi's first involvement in politics came in 1941, when he joined the Neo Destour youth organization in Hammam-Lif. He went to France in 1950 to study law in Paris. He began his career as a lawyer defending Neo-Destour activists. Essebsi later joined Tunisia's leader Habib Bourguiba as a supporter of the Tunisian separatist movement and later as his adviser following the country's independence from France in 1956.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.