It has now been twenty years since the religious maniac os-jain bin Laden made 9/11.
Over the past two decades, bin Laden and his al-Qaida organization have become a worldwide household name and even a feared name.
But a corner of bin Laden's personal family life is rarely revealed to the world.
Recently, American biographer Peter Bergen meticulously sorted out more than 470,000 personal life records, personal letters and other precious documents collected by the Navy SEALs at the site where bin Laden was killed.
Accordingly, a book entitled The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden was published.
The book provides a detailed account of bin Laden's family life, and his contradictory, complex, radical, and even crazy personality is also vividly expressed in family life.
On the one hand, he asked his three-year-old daughter to stay away from any man and insisted that women should not show their faces when men showed up.
His two older wives, on the other hand, are highly educated and have doctorates in scripture and child psychology.
These intelligent women helped bin Laden write his public statements, shape his public image, and even discuss complex and highly secretive strategic issues with him.
According to Bergen's combing, bin Laden had five wives and at least 24 children named after him.
When he was killed by U.S. forces in 2011, his wife spanned the ages from 28 to 62 and his children ranged from 3 to 35.
How does the madman bin Laden manage his large, chaotic family? How does he choose the women who enrich his harem? What about the relationship between his many wives and children?
First, bin Laden's first marriage in the shadow of family marriage
Bin Laden was born into an aristocratic family with close ties to the Saudi Royal Family.
Bin Laden's father was the equivalent of a Saudi royal businessman, contracting major engineering construction projects in the Arab countries of the country and even the entire Gulf.
Saudi Arabia's archaic marriage system allowed men to marry and have children without restrictions, and the conservative religious atmosphere within the family fueled this practice.
The result of polygamy was that bin Laden had as many as 54 siblings, of whom he ranked 17th.
From an early age, he rarely saw his father, and naturally he rarely received any love, which led to his emphasis on the family to a certain extent:
He dragged his family for decades.
There are even claims that he was eventually found to have dried women's and children's clothes in the yard that far exceeded that of ordinary families.
The lives of bin Laden in his early years were not much different from those of most of the rich children of the Gulf:
Attend summer school in Oxford, England, go boating on the River Thames, and visit sites of great significance in Western history such as Stratford.
He also interacted with women in Western countries, and he had associated with two Spanish girls.
But these experiences not only did not make him gradually affected by Western civilization, but made him increasingly suspicious and hostile to Western civilization.
At the age of 16, he realized that the British were a morally depraved people and that he was a devout Muslim with whom he did not share the same.
In 1974, at the age of 17, bin Laden returned to Saudi Arabia from Britain and married his 15-year-old cousin, Naiva Gamheim, on the family's arrangement.
This was also bin Laden's earliest wife, abdul Abdul, the eldest son of the two in 1976.
Over the next twenty-five years, up to 2001, they had at least ten children. Although the marriage satisfied both parents, it did not seem to make the couple really come together in their hearts.
The end result was that Naiva left bin Laden in 2001.
There are many opinions about bin Laden's marriage, with the prevailing narrative being that Naiwa and her children cannot tolerate long and hard life in Khartoum, Yemen and Afghanistan.
Especially after 9/11, the Bin Ladens needed to play hide-and-seek with U.S. troops in caves in Afghanistan and Pakistan for a long time.
The severe decline in the quality of life caused Naiwa, who was also a royal nobleman, to accept it and went directly back to Latakia's mother's house to live the rest of his life.
After that, the connection between Naiva and bin Laden was completely severed.
Together with her son Omar, she also published a book in 2009 called Bin Laden: Osama's Wife and Children Take Us into a Secret World.
Bin Laden doesn't seem to know what the book, which has quickly sold well in the Western world, portrays it.
During the last two years of his life, he never made any public comments on the book.
Bin Laden's old wives
In 1976, the father bin Laden entered King Abdulaziz University, the number one in Saudi Arabia, where he received a bachelor's degree in management.
After graduating, he worked as an engineer and a manager in the family business.
It operates in everything from construction to the oil industry, and has amassed billions of dollars in wealth in its early twenties.
By 1979, however, bin Laden had made a decision that shocked everyone: he was going to Afghanistan to organize private armed forces against aggression from the Soviet Union.
For the decade from 1979 to 1989, bin Laden spent most of his time in Afghanistan, with a few more in Sudan, Yemen and Saudi Arabia.
While in Sudan in 1983, bin Laden met his second wife, a respected doctor of scripture nearly ten years older than him, Hadidja Sharif.
Born in 1948, this Al-Hadija studied and studied Islamic scriptures in a scholastic school in Saudi Arabia and earned a doctorate in scripture.
After graduating with his Ph.D., Al-Khadija now in Saudi Arabia and later went to Sudan to teach scriptures.
According to Visal Turabi, the wife of Sultan Hassan:
Hadidja was popular as a personal trainer among dignitaries in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, and many families took pride in inviting had hadija to teach scripture to their children.
Bin Laden also heard of Hadija's fame during his time in The Sultan, and soon after becoming acquainted with Hadija, he pursued her.
Bin Laden attached great importance to the interpretation of scriptures and teachings.
Therefore, he hopes that Hadija will provide a modern packaging for the Jihad concept, so as to attract more young people to devote themselves to their careers.
But their marriage didn't last long.
Because bin Laden has been the focus of the U.S. government since the end of the 20th century, living in hiding in Tibet is embarrassing for a university professor like Hadija.
In 1993, bin Laden allowed Hadija to live alone and promised to divorce Hadija, and three years later the two formally divorced.
According to bin Laden's former chief bodyguard, in the final hours of her life in Sudan, Hadija filed for divorce from bin Laden because she said she "could not continue to live a simple and hard life".
Hadija had three children with bin Laden, the most famous of whom was Ali Bin Laden, so she was also called um Ali by the Western media, meaning Ali's mother.
Bin Laden's third wife was Haririya Thalber.
Haririya is the oldest and most knowledgeable of bin Laden's many wives, and is often regarded as bin Laden's favorite wife and his irreplaceable think tank.
Haririya also holds a Ph.D. in The Study of Islamic Scriptures and is also a child psychologist.
Like bin Laden, she was deeply influenced by the Wahhabis of the Sunnis of Islam and was a radical fundamentalist.
The outbreak of the Gulf War made bin Laden, who thought he could be disarmed and returned to the field, realize that his biggest enemy was the United States.
He advised the Saudi king that he wanted to use al-Qaida as a spearhead in countering Saddam's military adventures.
But the old king Abdul not only firmly rejected him, but also reached an agreement with the United States to build bases and settle in several Arab countries.
This move greatly stimulated bin Laden and Haririya at the time, and put them on a road of no return.
Haririya's vast knowledge made her bin Laden's indispensable assistant.
She helped bin Laden write statements aimed at young people in the Islamic world, and she helped bin Laden plan the development and operation of al-Qaida and discuss ways to confront the Americans.
After their marriage, there has been a sharp increase in terrorist attacks against Western countries for which bin Laden and al-Qaida claim to be responsible.
However, since Haririya and bin Laden were half-aged when they married, she only bore bin Laden one son, Hamza bin Laden.
According to people familiar with the matter, Haririya is weak and has a dark complexion, which is far from beautiful for the traditional Arab aesthetic.
But she came from "a wealthy and prominent family", exuded "imperial temperament" between her hands and feet, and was "deeply committed to the cause of jihad".
Haririya stayed with bin Laden until he was killed in 2011, and Haririya was one of the people who witnessed the scene.
Haririya and bin Laden's only son, Hamza, quickly became one of al-Qaida's key leaders after bin Laden was killed in 2011.
He posted audio and video messages on the Internet calling for attacks on the United States and its Western allies to avenge his father's murder.
In February 2019, the U.S. State Department issued a notice saying it was seeking information about Hamza's whereabouts at a cost of one million dollars.
Just six months later, on September 14, Trump claimed that Hamza had been killed by U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
However, the more detailed information remains confidential to this day and will not be unblocked.
Third, the mystery of the family caused by the young wife
Bin Laden's fourth wife, Siham Sabal, met and married in 1986.
Siham, who had originally taught Arabic grammar at a university in Saudi Arabia, was quickly attracted to and married the middle-aged man after meeting bin Laden.
She gave up her teaching position in Saudi Arabia after 9/11 and went on a mission with bin Laden.
She is not involved in bin Laden's big and small decisions, but because of her excellent literary skills, she also helps him with some secretarial and desk work.
The main energy was devoted to educating bin Laden's children and grandchildren.
Siham had four children with bin Laden, the eldest son, Khalid and bin Laden, who died in a 2011 U.S. attack, and the second son, Hadija, who died in another U.S. attack in 2007.
Bin Laden's youngest wife was also the wife who created the most controversy.
Born in Yemen on 27 March 1982, she was born in Yemen and married bin Laden at the age of 18.
Compared with bin Laden's previous wives who were well educated and had noble origins, she was nothing but young.
Before bringing her home, bin Laden told his other wives that the woman who was about to step into the house in the future was 30 years old and highly educated.
Bin Laden apparently had his own plans to lie to his wives.
At that time, he had already begun to plan the 9/11 incident a year later, and he believed that if the terrorist attack was successful, he would be chased and intercepted by the Americans all over the world.
Thus marrying a Yemeni tribal woman can, on the one hand, promote al-Qaida's expansion in Yemen and recruit more personnel;
On the other hand, once afghanistan and Sudan are no longer willing to provide him with asylum, Yemen's vast desert can become a hiding place for him to continue his jihadist cause.
Before sending his subordinate Ismail to Yemen to find the right girl, bin Laden made this demand: "She must be religious, docile, generous, tutored, quiet, young, and not jealous of bin Laden's other wives." Bin Laden doesn't want his new wife to spend all his energy on this. ”
But the reality of the marriage did not seem to be what bin Laden had hoped
When bin Laden was alive, there were already looming cracks in the family atmosphere; when bin Laden died, the mutual attacks between several wives were even more unexpected by the world.
In his early years after marrying Amar, bin Laden was also keen on his attacks.
But with the net laid by the United States after the 9/11 incident, even bin Laden, who had become accustomed to a life of upheaval and displacement, was already overjoyed.
The young and beautiful wife became the source of bin Laden's happiness.
In order not to damage his body, he refused to use any agent other than hair dye on his body. Amar and bin Laden had six children, which was more than the sum of the children born to Haririya and Siham, which showed that bin Laden was spoiled by Amar.
After 2005, bin Laden began settling secretly in Abbottabad, a small town about 50 kilometers north of Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan.
Peter Bergen compiled a summary of bin Laden's family life in his later years based on his daily activities:
"He leads the family to live the life of a devout extended family, is very interested in the education of his children, and personally presides over family meetings. The three wives took their 12 children and more grandchildren to live there with him. ”
However, it is precisely because bin Laden has let the children live in seclusion with him in his own hiding place that the huge family is always in mortal danger.
On May 2, 2011, bin Laden, who had been hiding in Tibet for ten years, finally faced his fate.
The 6th Navy SEALs determined bin Laden's residence after meticulous reconnaissance and launched a helicopter raid at night.
During the attack, Amar, the youngest wife who lives with bin Laden on the second floor, was hit in the lower leg.
The other two wives were unharmed because they lived downstairs.
Except for Khalid, who was killed in a gun battle with the U.S. military, the other children were not killed in the attack.
Soon after bin Laden's family was imprisoned, and as the news that shocked the world spread around the world, all kinds of rumors also roared in.
It has been suggested that Haririya was so jealous that Amar could always be with bin Laden, and therefore intentionally leaked his whereabouts to the U.S. military.
In prison, she angrily scolded Amar for always clinging to bin Laden, like a prostitute who thought about courting all day.
Haririya even blamed Amar for the discovery of bin Laden by the U.S. military.
But Amar retorted, believing that Haririya and her family were the suspects who colluded with the CIA to betray bin Laden, and that her injured leg in the attack was the best proof of her loyalty to bin Laden.
After such an attack lasted a year, Pakistani authorities deported several of bin Laden's wives on the grounds of "illegal entry," which finally brought the farce to an end.
Although bin Laden's children continue to engage in violent attacks and even become al-Qaida leaders, several of his wives seem to have completely disappeared from public view and stopped speaking out.
As for whether os-laden was betrayed by his wife, we do not know.