Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa (born 29 October 1982), also known by his former nom de guerre Abu Mohammad al-Julani, is a Syrian politician and former rebel commander who has served as the president of Syria since 2025. As the emir of Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and the de facto leader of the Syrian Salvation Government (SSG) during the Syrian civil war, he led the decisive Syrian opposition offensives that resulted in the fall of the Assad regime in 2024.
Born in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to a Syrian Sunni Muslim family from the Golan Heights, he grew up in Syria's capital, Damascus. Al-Sharaa joined al-Qaeda in Iraq shortly before the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq and fought for two years in the Iraqi insurgency. From 2005 to 2011, he was captured and imprisoned by American and Iraqi forces. His release coincided with the onset of the Syrian revolution against the Ba'athist regime of Bashar al-Assad. In 2012, with the support of al-Qaeda's central command, al-Sharaa founded Jabhat al-Nusra, also known as al-Nusra Front, to depose the Assad regime.
As the emir of al-Nusra Front, al-Sharaa built a stronghold in Idlib Governorate during the Syrian civil war, although his organisation committed a number of war crimes against civilians. Al-Sharaa resisted Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's attempts to merge al-Nusra Front with the Islamic State, leading to total war between the two groups. In 2016, al-Sharaa cut Jabhat al-Nusra's ties with al-Qaeda, launched a crackdown on its loyalists, and rebranded his organisation as Jabhat Fatah al-Sham. After breaking with al-Qaeda, he sought international legitimacy by presenting a more moderate view of himself, renouncing transnational jihadism and focusing on governance in Syria.
In 2017, al-Sharaa merged Jabhat Fatah al-Sham with other rebel groups to create Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham, which he led until 2025. HTS established the Syrian Salvation Government, a technocratic civilian administration, in the territory it controlled in Idlib Governorate. The SSG collected taxes and provided public services, though it faced protests and criticism within Idlib for authoritarian tactics and suppressing dissent. In November 2024, al-Sharaa launched a major 11-day offensive against the Assad regime that culminated in the capture of Damascus by opposition forces, toppling the Ba'athist regime as Bashar al-Assad fled to Russia.
Al-Sharaa became Syria's de facto head of state, leading the Syrian caretaker government from 8 December 2024 until 29 January 2025, when he was formally appointed as the president of Syria. As president of Syria's transitional government, he focused on consolidating power, rebuilding state institutions, unifying armed factions, and restoring Syria's foreign relations, including with the United States, Russia, and other regional powers. He signed a constitutional declaration establishing a five-year transitional period that enshrined Islamic jurisprudence as the main source of legislation with plans to hold elections afterwards. In October 2025, a parliamentary election was held under al-Sharaa's administration, the first since Assad's overthrow.
Domestically, al-Sharaa has pursued economic recovery, security stabilization, transitional justice, and the return of Syrian refugees. Extensive negotiations with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to integrate their organisation into the state remained inconclusive throughout 2025. In January 2026, after clashes in Aleppo between the transitional government and SDF forces, he signed a decree stating that Syrian Kurds are an essential part of Syria while recognizing the Kurdish language and Newroz. His government launched a successful offensive against the SDF and subsequently signed a peace and integration agreement, culminating in the full integration of its civil institutions and the dissolution of the SDF in August 2026.
In the first year of al-Sharaa's presidency, massacres targeting Alawites took place in coastal Syria, while clashes with the Druze occurred in southern Syria, both involving government-affiliated troops. Following the fall of the Ba'athist regime, Israel called the 1974 Agreement on Disengagement void, and initiated a limited invasion of southwestern Syria from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Al-Sharaa has opposed renewed conflict with Israel, reaffirmed Syria's commitment to the 1974 deal, and condemned Iranian influence.
Early life and military career
Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa was born on 29 October 1982 in Riyadh to a middle-class Syrian Sunni Muslim family of four brothers and two sisters. The family claims to trace their lineage back to the Sahabi Abd al-Rahman ibn Awf from the Banu Zuhra clan of the Quraysh tribe, whose grandson migrated to the al-Kafarat region of Jordan as part of the early Islamic expansion. Like many other Qurayshi families across the Arab world, they had historically been involved in scholarly pursuits. According to The New York Times, the family discussed politics at home but had no record of involvement in Islamic extremism.
His father, Hussein al-Sharaa, worked as an oil engineer at the Ministry of Oil and Mineral Resources, while his mother, Widad al-Khaled, 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, habitually wearing a long austere tunic and a knitted cap.
According to Syrian researcher Hussam Jazmati, al-Sharaa's classmates remembered him as a studious but unremarkable boy who wore thick glasses and avoided attention. During his youth, he was described as "bookish", "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.
Al-Sharaa said that, while he largely disagreed with his father ideologically, they both shared a commitment to defending the Palestinians. Besides the displacement of his grandfather and his family from the Golan Heights, al-Sharaa stated he was radicalized by the Second Intifada in 2000. He said: "I was 17 or 18 years old at the time and I started thinking about how I could fulfil my duties, defending a people who are oppressed by occupiers and invaders." When asked about his reaction to the September 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 people regret the killing of innocent people, for sure."
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 without telling his family.
Al-Sharaa travelled from Damascus to Baghdad by bus just weeks before the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. In 2003, he was detained and questioned by the Syrian Military Intelligence Directorate for his illegal departure from Syria to Iraq, but was released after denying affiliation with any political parties or extremist groups. After arriving in Iraq, al-Sharaa quickly rose through the ranks of al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). In 2004, Iraqi intelligence believed al-Sharaa was Zarqawi's deputy, according to The Economist. The Times of Israel claimed in 2013 that al-Sharaa was a close associate of AQI emir, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. But in later years, al-Sharaa denied ever meeting al-Zarqawi and stated that he served only as a regular foot-soldier under al-Qaeda against the American occupation.
In 2005, al-Sharaa was arrested by American forces while planting explosives and imprisoned for six years in various detention centres, including Abu Ghraib, Camp Bucca, Camp Cropper and Camp Taji prisons. Al-Sharaa convinced the Iraqi authorities holding him that he was a local Iraqi, not a foreign fighter, by speaking in Iraqi-accented Arabic and using a pseudonym, Amjad Mudhafar. During this time, al-Sharaa reportedly taught classical Arabic to other prisoners, increasing his popularity.