Gulbuddin Hekmatyar was born in 1949 in Imam Saheb, Kunduz province, northern Afghanistan, a member of the Kharoti tribe of the Ghilji Pashtun. His father, Ghulam Qader, who migrated to Kunduz, is originally from the Ghazni province. Afghan businessman and Kharoti tribal leader Gholam Serwar Nasher deemed Hekmatyar to be a bright young man and sent him to the Mahtab Qala military academy in 1968, but he was expelled due to his Islamic political views two years later. From 1969 to 1972, Hekmatyar attended Kabul University's engineering department. During his first year at the university he wrote a 149-page book entitled "The Priority of Sense Over Matter", where he refutes communists denying the existence of God by quoting European philosophers and scientists like Hegel or Francesco Redi. Though he did not complete his degree, his followers still address him as "Engineer Hekmatyar".