Hamida al-Attas (born A'alia Ghanem;), is the mother of

Osama bin Laden Osama bin Laden (10 March 19572 May 2011) was a militant leader who was the founder and first general emir of al-Qaeda. Ideologically a pan-Islamist, Bin Laden participated in the Afghan ''mujahideen'' against the Soviet Union, and support ...

, the founder and first general emir of

al-Qaeda , image = Flag of Jihad.svg , caption = Jihadist flag, Flag used by various al-Qaeda factions , founder = Osama bin Laden{{Assassinated, Killing of Osama bin Laden , leaders = {{Plainlist, * Osama bin Lad ...

Biography

Hamida al-Attas came from a

Syrian Syrians () are the majority inhabitants of Syria, indigenous to the Levant, most of whom have Arabic, especially its Levantine and Mesopotamian dialects, as a mother tongue. The cultural and linguistic heritage of the Syrian people is a blend ...

family of

citrus ''Citrus'' is a genus of flowering trees and shrubs in the family Rutaceae. Plants in the genus produce citrus fruits, including important crops such as oranges, mandarins, lemons, grapefruits, pomelos, and limes. ''Citrus'' is nativ ...

farmers, with two brothers and another sister, living in two small coastal villages, Omraneya and Babryon, outside the port of

Latakia Latakia (; ; Syrian Arabic, Syrian pronunciation: ) is the principal port city of Syria and capital city of the Latakia Governorate located on the Mediterranean coast. Historically, it has also been known as Laodicea in Syria or Laodicea ad Mar ...

. She grew up in a family of

Alawite Alawites () are an Arabs, Arab ethnoreligious group who live primarily in the Levant region in West Asia and follow Alawism, a sect of Islam that splintered from early Shia as a ''ghulat'' branch during the ninth century. Alawites venerate A ...

s, an offshoot of

Shia Islam Shia Islam is the second-largest Islamic schools and branches, branch of Islam. It holds that Muhammad in Islam, Muhammad designated Ali ibn Abi Talib () as both his political Succession to Muhammad, successor (caliph) and as the spiritual le ...

. She married Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden in Latakia in 1956 and moved to

Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is a country in West Asia. Located in the centre of the Middle East, it covers the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula and has a land area of about , making it the List of Asian countries ...

with her husband. She was the tenth wife of Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden. Her husband had many wives and he divorced most of them, as having only four wives at once was in accordance with Muslim law. It has been reported that she was a

concubine Concubinage is an interpersonal relationship, interpersonal and Intimate relationship, sexual relationship between two people in which the couple does not want to, or cannot, enter into a full marriage. Concubinage and marriage are often regarde ...

rather than wife of Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden. She was more cosmopolitan than Mohammed's first three Saudi wives. Osama bin Laden was her only child with Mohammad bin Laden, and they divorced soon after his birth in 1957; Osama was somewhere between the 17th and the 22nd of the 24 sons which Mohammad would sire. She often spent summers at her brother Naji's home in

and Osama went with her until he was 17. In 1974, when Osama was 17, he married her brother's daughter, 14-year-old Najwa Ghanem, who had been promised to him. Hamida later married Mohammed al-Attas, a Hadhrami administrator in the fledgling Bin Laden empire, when Osama was four or five; they had three sons and a daughter including Ahmad Mohammed. Osama took an active part in raising his half siblings. It has been reported that, in the spring or summer of 2001, Osama bin Laden placed a phone call to his mother and in a "very brief conversation" told her "that he

ill ILL, or Ill, or ill may refer to: Places * Ill (France), a river in Alsace, France, tributary of the Rhine * Ill (Vorarlberg), a river in Vorarlberg, Austria, tributary of the Rhine * Ill (Saarland), a river of Saarland, Germany, tributary o ...

not be able to call again for a long time," adding that "great events are about to take place." Following the

September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks, also known as 9/11, were four coordinated Islamist terrorist suicide attacks by al-Qaeda against the United States in 2001. Nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners, crashing the first two into ...

, Hamida has said "I disapprove of the ambitions the press ascribe to him, but I am satisfied with Osama, and I pray to God that He will guide him along the right path." She later stated "My life was very difficult because he was so far away from me. samawas a very good kid and he loved me so much." She continued "He was a very good child until he met some people who pretty much brainwashed him in his early 20s. You can call it a cult. They got money for their cause. I would always tell him to stay away from them, and he would never admit to me what he was doing, because he loved me so much." The person Osama met in college was

Abdullah Azzam Abdullah Yusuf Azzam () was a Palestinian-Jordanian Islamist jihadist and theologian. Belonging to the Salafi movement within Sunni Islam, he and his family fled from what had been the Jordanian-annexed West Bank after the 1967 Six-Day War a ...

Notes

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Attas, Hamida 1943 births Living people Bin Laden family People from Latakia Saudi Arabian women Syrian emigrants to Saudi Arabia Syrian Alawites de:Osama bin Laden#Familiäre Herkunft

Biography

See also

Notes

References