Little is known about bin Laden's childhood. But a few things can be deducted from what we do know.
He was born about 1957 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to Muhammad Awad bin Ladin and his tenth wife, the one considered to be his least favorite wife. Osama was her only child, and the fact of only one child is given as so-called "proof" that she was unfavored.
Osama was one of the more than fifty children of Muhammad Awad. It is hard for a western mind to imagine just how it was being the only child of an unfavored wife. Or the child with 50+ siblings. There was likely little contact with his father, certainly no real nuturing. Did his mother, like Hitler's, try to make up for that by overindulging him? No one knows.
Obviously, to support such a large family, a great deal of money is required. And Muhammad Awad provided that. He was not a wealthy man when he married; in fact he was quite poor. But he founded a construction company, and found a way to get royal patronage. These and other connections won his concern many important commissions, including rebuilding mosques in the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. He became a billionaire.
This seventeenth child of the family was reportedly a quiet and ordinary boy. He attended the schools of Jedda. During school holidays he learned the family business–it is not stated whether or not he had to start at the bottom as a worker, or if he was slipped past all of that into the higher echelons.
There are two versions of what happened next. The Washington Post gives the most graphic conception: he left high school in 1973, at age 16, to carouse in the trendy bars and nightclubs of Beirut, happily exchanging put-downs and punches over the attentions of the exotic barmaids or belly dancers until 1975, when the Lebanese civil war ended these festivities.
The second version, which is probably more accurate, reports that he studied management and economics in King Abdul Aziz University in Jedda, which would mean that he didn't leave high school until he had graduated. At the university, apparently, he came under the influence of religious teachers who introduced him to the world of Islamic politics. The next life-changing experience for him was the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and things escalated from there.
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