Hamida al-Attas ( ar, حميدة العطاس, translit=Ḥamīda al-Aṭṭās; born A'liyya Ghanim; ar, عالية غانم, translit='Ā'liyya Ghānim; , is the mother of the deceased

al-Qaeda Al-Qaeda (; , ) is an Islamic extremist organization composed of Salafist jihadists. Its members are mostly composed of Arabs, but also include other peoples. Al-Qaeda has mounted attacks on civilian and military targets in various countr ...

leader,

Osama bin Laden Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden (10 March 1957 – 2 May 2011) was a Saudi-born extremist militant who founded al-Qaeda and served as its leader from 1988 until his death in 2011. Ideologically a pan-Islamist, his group is designated ...

Biography

Hamida al-Attas came from a

Syrian Syrians ( ar, سُورِيُّون, ''Sūriyyīn'') are an Eastern Mediterranean ethnic group indigenous to the Levant. They share common Levantine Semitic roots. The cultural and linguistic heritage of the Syrian people is a blend of both indi ...

family of

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

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

Latakia , coordinates = , elevation_footnotes = , elevation_m = 11 , elevation_ft = , postal_code_type = , postal_code = , area_code = Country code: 963 City code: 41 , geocode ...

. She grew up in a family of

Alawite The Alawis, Alawites ( ar, علوية ''Alawīyah''), or pejoratively Nusayris ( ar, نصيرية ''Nuṣayrīyah'') are an ethnoreligious group that lives primarily in Levant and follows Alawism, a sect of Islam that originated from Shia Isl ...

s, an offshoot of

Shia Islam Shīʿa Islam or Shīʿīsm is the second-largest branch of Islam. It holds that the Islamic prophet Muhammad designated ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib as his successor (''khalīfa'') and the Imam (spiritual and political leader) after him, mos ...

. At age 14, 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 Western Asia. It covers the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and has a land area of about , making it the fifth-largest country in Asia, the second-largest in the Ara ...

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 and sexual relationship between a man and a woman in which the couple does not want, or cannot enter into a full marriage. Concubinage and marriage are often regarded as similar but mutually exclusive. Concubi ...

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

Latakia , coordinates = , elevation_footnotes = , elevation_m = 11 , elevation_ft = , postal_code_type = , postal_code = , area_code = Country code: 963 City code: 41 , geocode ...

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 Najwa Ghanem ( ar, نجوى غانم; born c. 1960), is a Syrian woman who was the first wife and first cousin of Osama bin Laden, being the daughter of his mother's brother. She is also known as '' Um Abdallah'' (mother of Abdallah). She was born ...

, 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 may refer to: * ''I Love Lucy'', a landmark American television sitcom * Illorsuit Heliport (location identifier: ILL), a heliport in Illorsuit, Greenland * Institut Laue–Langevin, an internationally financed scientific facility * Interlibrar ...

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, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commer ...

, 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.

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

References