Bin Laden was born in 1957, reportedly the 17th of the 57 children of Mohammed bin Laden, the owner of the largest construction company in Saudi Arabia. He was raised under conservative Wahhabi tenets and, while enrolled at King Abdel Aziz University in Jidda, developed a belief in pan-Islamicism, a philosophy that stresses a united Islamic world. In the late 1970s, after Afghanistan was invaded by the Soviet Union, bin Laden traveled to the country to raise money for the mujahedin. Through his family connections, he was able to deliver heavy equipment to the mujahedin that was used to build roads, tunnels and training camps. Exiled from his native country because he criticized the Saudi King — for allowing U.S. troops to stay in the Kingdom — bin Laden remained in Afghanistan, where he created his own training camp and, with the help of his former college professor Abdullah Azzam, founded al-Qaeda, meaning “solid base,” to offer religious training to the mujahedin.
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