 Although little is reliably known of Muhannad's early life, he was born in 1969 and hailed from the Medina area of Saudi Arabia's western Hejaz region.It is said that he have graduated with honors from the Islamic University of Madinah and is believed to have descended from Al Ashraf, meaning “from the family of the Prophet.”

Muhannad arrived in the Caucasus in 1999 during the early days of the Second Chechen War, attempting to pass through Georgia into Chechnya.Upon arrival in the Pankisi Gorge – a mountainous valley in northeastern Georgia inhabited mostly by ethnic Chechens known as Kists – Muhannad waited almost two years for his opportunity to cross the border.