section_path: Early life and military career/Youth in Syria
section_name: Youth in Syria
paragraph_text: Youth in Syria
  
  Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa was born on 29 October 1982 in Riyadh to a middle-class family, of four brothers and two sisters. His father, Hussein al-Sharaa, worked there as an oil engineer at the Ministry of Petroleum, and his mother was a geography teacher. The family returned to Syria in 1989, settling in the affluent Mezzeh neighborhood of Damascus, where his father opened a real estate office. Whilst living in an apartment block in the Mezzeh neighbourhood in the west of the city, al-Sharaa worked part-time as a child in a grocery store owned by his father. He frequented the Shafi'i mosque in his neighbourhood, and at the age of seventeen, he became religious.
  
  According to Hussam Jazmati, who produced his most definitive biography, classmates remember al-Sharaa as a studious but unremarkable boy who wore thick glasses and avoided attention. During his youth, he was described as "quiet" and "shy", "manipulatively intelligent" but "socially introverted", and was noted for his "good looks" and a romance with an Alawite girl which both families opposed. In a Reuters interview, a local shop owner from Al-Shaara's neighborhood recalled meeting him in 1996 during his youth. The shop owner described him as a polite and reserved young man who spoke little and was rarely seen in the neighborhood unless necessary. After the rebel takeover of Damascus, Ahmed al-Sharaa briefly returned to his childhood home, where he was seen politely asking the current occupants if they could leave, stating that the house held personal memories for him. Witnesses say the residents obliged, but al-Sharaa has not been seen there since. Despite his absence, neighbors from the block continue to knock on his door daily, hoping to see him.
  
  Al-Sharaa said that, while he largely disagreed with his father ideologically, they both shared a commitment to defending the Palestinians. Besides the story of his grandfather's and his family's displacement from the Golan Heights, al-Sharaa said that the Second Intifada in 2000 had an impact on his life choices. According to an interview with Frontline in 2021, al-Sharaa stated he was radicalized by the Palestinian Second Intifada in "the early 2000s." He said: "I started thinking about how I could fulfil my duties, defending a people who are oppressed by occupiers and invaders." Asked many years later about his reaction to the 2001 9/11 attacks, al-Sharaa stated that "anyone who lived in the Islamic or Arab world at the time who tells you he wasn't happy about it would be lying", but added that he understood "regret" about the killing of innocent people.
  
  Al-Sharaa enrolled at Damascus University, studying media studies and enrolling in the Faculty of Medicine for two years. Whilst being a university student, he travelled from Damascus to Aleppo on Fridays to attend the sermons of Mahmoud Gul Aghasi (Abu al-Qaqaa) there. After studying for two years, he moved to Iraq in 2003.