Osama bin Laden was born in 1957 in Riyadh to Hamida al-Attas and Muhammed Awad bin Laden, a wealthy businessman in Saudi Arabia. The
Bin Laden family traces back to the Hadhramaut region of Yemen, while his mother is from Syria. Osama was one of 52 children. Osama's mother, Hamida Ganem al-Attas (Alia), was one of Mohammed bin Laden's fourth wives. Alia was 14 at the time of the marriage, and they had one son together -- Osama, and then they divorced. After the divorce, Hamida married Mohammed al-Attas, who was a mid-level manager in the BinLaden Group. Together they had four children. Osama was raised by his mother and lived together with his four half-siblings. Mohammed provided places for his former wives to stay, so Osama was raised in Medina and the Hijaz, in Saudi Arabia. At some point, Alia, Attas, and Osama moved out of the Bin Laden complex and into a suburban home in Jeddah. As a child, Osama was shy, but he enjoyed activities including swimming, hunting, and horseback riding. Each summer, Alia took the family to Latakia in Syria, where they stayed with relatives. Around age 10, Osama was enrolled at Brummana, a boarding school in Lebanon, but he was there only briefly and returned to Saudi Arabia less than a year later. Osama's father was a distant figure in Osama's live, and his father died in a plane crash when Osama was only 10 years old. Yet, Osama was very much inspired by his father for his achievements
