Habiba Mssika, 22 Alfred-Durand-Claye Street (Borj Bourguiba Street)
Habiba Mssika was North Africa’s first musical superstar. As Tunisia’s greatest entertainment artist of the early twentieth century, she rose to fame thanks to her epic performances on stage and screen. She was born Margueritte Mssika in the Hara of Tunis in 1903 and attended the Alliance Israélite Universelle School. Her aunt, the singer Leila Sfez, afforded Habiba’s entry to the music scene. By the 1920s, Habiba Mssika was North Africa’s first sex symbol and had built up a legion of admirers thanks to her singing and her leading theatre and film roles. Mssika also aligned herself with the emerging Tunisian nationalist movement, joining the theatre company of Mohamed Bourguiba (Habib Bourguiba’s older brother). Her purported lover Eliahou Mimouni built a house for her in the city of Testour, but Habiba had no desire to leave Tunis and never visited the house. After she began a new relationship her ex-lover Mimouni entered Habiba’s apartment on rue Alfred-Durand-Claye in Tunis on the morning of 20 February, 1930, doused her with gasoline and burned her alive. Seriously burned in turn, he died shortly after Mssika was buried in the Borgel cemetery in Tunis. Her funeral constituted one of the largest and most significant Tunisian gatherings of the early 20th century .
