Encyclopedia of Islam

Further reading: H. H. Bilgrami and Syed Ali Ashraf, The 

Concept of an Islamic University (Cambridge: Cambridge 

University Press, 1985); George Makdisi, The Rise of the 

K  696  

university

---

Colleges (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1981); 

Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Islamic Science (London: World 

of Islam Festival Publishing Co., 1976); Joseph S. Szyli-

owicz,  Education and Modernization in the Middle East

(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1973).

urf

  See 

customary

 

law

.

urs

  See 

mawlid

.

Usama bin Ladin

 

(Osama Binladen, 

Usama Binladin, Ussamah Bin Ladin, 

Oussama Ben Laden, Ussamah Bin 

Ladin)

 

(1957–  )  Islamic militant, head of  

al-Qaida network that attacked the New York  

World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 

11, 2001

Usama bin Muhammad bin Awad bin Ladin became 

involved in the Afghan 

Jihad

 after the Soviet Union 

(USSR) invaded a

Fghanistan

 in 1979. In 1988, 

with a group of other jihadists, he founded the 

al

-q

aida

 network to train soldiers for an ongoing 

jihad after the end of the fighting in Afghanistan. 

It is believed that bin Ladin has funded or master-

minded a number of terrorist attacks around the 

world, including the September 11, 2001, attacks 

on the World Trade Building in New York and the 

Pentagon in Washington, D.C.

Bin Ladin was born in Riyadh, s

aUdi

  a

rabia

,

one of 54 children of Muhammad Awad bin Ladin 

(1906–1967), a businessman who had made a 

fortune in the construction business. Muhammad 

had come to Saudi Arabia in the 1920s as a poor 

immigrant from y

emen

 and was hired as a laborer 

by the Arabian American Oil Company (Aramco, 

now known as Saudi Aramco) in the 1930s, rising 

to become an independent contractor for Aramco 

and eventually developing close ties to the Saudi 

royal family. His construction company, known 

as the Muhammad Bin Ladin Organization (now 

known as the Saudi Binladin Group), was respon-

sible for building many of the kingdom’s first 

roads and renovating the holy sites in m

ecca

 and 

m

edina

. Usama’s mother, Alia, came from a Syrian 

family that may have belonged to that country’s 

a

laWi

 community. Usama’s parents divorced when 

Usama was four or five years old and his mother 

then married Muhammad al-Attas; the couple had 

four children, raising Usama in Jeddah with his 

stepbrothers and stepsister. He frequently joined in 

family gatherings with half-siblings on his father’s 

side of the family, and was included in the list of 

heirs to the Bin Ladin family fortune. Among his 

favorite pastimes was raising and riding horses.

Usama attended Al-Thaghr Model School, an 

elite secondary school in Jeddah, and is remem-

bered by his teachers as having been an average 

Usama bin Ladin, leader of al-Qaida 

(AP Photos)