Al-Baghdadi was born as Ibrahim Awwad Ibrahim Ali al-Badri al-Samarrai sometime in 1971 in Samarra, Iraq, about 95 kilometers (60 miles) north of Baghdad, according to a United Nations sanctions list. His hometown later would be the site of a 2006 bombing by Sunni militants on a revered Shiite shrine, an attack that sparked a wave of sectarian violence that pushed Iraq to the brink of civil war.
Details of his early days are murky. Most rely on a brief biography posted to online jihadi forums in July 2014 that traced his lineage to the Prophet Muhammad’s Quraysh tribe. Its claims, which cannot be independently confirmed, describe al-Baghdadi as coming from a religious family and earning a doctorate from Saddam University for Islamic Studies, the Iraqi capital’s main center at the time for Sunni clerical scholarship. It says he promoted the Salafi jihadi movement in Samarra and the nearby Diyala province. Salafi jihadis advocate “holy war” to bring about a strict, uncompromising version of Islamic law, or Shariah.
According to IS-affiliated websites, al-Baghdadi was detained by U.S. forces in Iraq and sent to Bucca prison in February 2004 for his anti-U.S. militant activities, although he was considered a civilian detainee and his jailers were unaware of his jihadi role. He was released 10 months later, after which he joined the al-Qaida branch in Iraq of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.