Ahmad al-Sharaa
أحمد الشرع
Also known as: Abu Mohammad al-Jolani • Abu Mohammad al-Julani • Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa
Biography
Ahmad al-Sharaa — formerly known by his nom de guerre Abu Mohammad al-Jolani — is the Syrian statesman who led the armed offensive that toppled Bashar al-Assad's 54-year dynasty in December 2024 and became Syria's transitional president on January 29, 2025. Born in Riyadh in 1982 to a Syrian family and raised in Damascus's Mezzeh neighborhood, he traveled to Iraq after the 2003 US invasion, was imprisoned in Abu Ghraib and Camp Bucca, and was released in 2011 to establish al-Qaeda's Syria branch — Jabhat al-Nusra. Over the following decade he methodically broke from al-Qaeda, evolved his movement into Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, built a functioning governance structure in Idlib, and in November-December 2024 led the military campaign that swept through Aleppo, Hama, Homs, and Damascus in eleven days. He entered Damascus on December 8, 2024, as Assad fled to Moscow.