The bin Ladens of Saudi Arabia are both very numerous and very wealthy. They have also been hit by tragic air accidents before .
Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaida until his death in 2011, was one of more than 50 children of the clan’s patriarch, Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden who had came to Saudi Arabia n the early 1930s from Yemen’s Hadramawt region to work on construction sites.
Over subsequent decades Saudi Arabia experienced massive growth as oil revenues began to flood in and the former labourer made his fortune after impressing the Saudi royal family with his efficiency and hard work as a small contractor. His company, a favoured contractor for massive high-profile building projects in the kingdom, expanded to become one of the biggest such firms in the Middle East.
Mohammed bin Laden had four wives at any one time – the maximum according to Islamic law - and divorced frequently.
One spouse was Alia Ghanoum, an elegant and sophisticated woman from Latakia in Syria. This was Osama bin Laden’s mother. Osama was born in 1957. Mohammed bin Laden was killed in a plane crash ten years later. Mohammed’s eldest son, Salem, died when an ultralight aircraft he was piloting hit power lines in the US in 1988. Salem’s place at the head of the firm was taken by a brother.
As is common with very wealthy Gulf families, there is something of a bin Laden diaspora. Some members of the clan remain in Saudi Arabia or the region, but many now live in the US and western Europe.
The resources of the family are not divided on the death of an elder member, as sometimes thought, but, as is customary, are managed to allow regular sums to be paid to relatives. Often this income is substantial.
Though it has been reported that a sister of Osama bin Laden was among the dead in the latest aviation tragedy to strike the family, it appears more likely that this was a step-sister. There are no reliable reports of Osama’s mother bearing more than one child and there was no immediate indication that any close relatives of the terrorist ideologue and organiser were involved.
Though many imagine the entire bin Laden clan following an austere and rigorous life determined by a harsh interpretation of Islam, this would be wrong. Many of the bin Ladens are highly westernised, educated in elite European or US universities and living, and sometimes working, in western cities. They are part of the commercial elite of the Middle East, which often a global lifestyle enjoyed in considerable luxury and are not necessarily profoundly devout. Such people, ironically perhaps, were among the various targets of the family’s most notorious member.