Mohamed Hadid - About being born in Nazareth and his Palestinian Heritage

Published: Oct. 31, 2023, 2:30 a.m.

Mohamed Anwar Hadid is an American real estate developer. He is known for building luxury hotels and mansions, mainly in the Bel Air neighborhood of Los Angeles and the city of Beverly Hills, California as well as for being the father of Gigi and Bella Hadid,

Mohamed was born in a Palestinian Muslim family in 1948 in Nazareth to Anwar Mohamed Hadid and his wife Khairiah Hadid. From his mother's side, he claims descent from the 18th-century Arab ruler of northern Palestine Dahir al-Umar. His story is one of many refugees and in this podcast episode he talks about his life in the Middle East and North Africa before his family moved to Washington when he was 14 and went to school in the US without knowing much English. He studied at North Carolina State University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

He started his career restoring and reselling classic cars and when he visited his parents on the island of Rhodes, Greece, he opened the Aquarius Disco Club with two partners.

The rest is history.