Hassan Nasrallah was born on 31 August 1960 in Bourj Hammoud, an eastern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, into a Shia family. He was the ninth of ten children. His father, Abdul Karim Nasrallah, was originally from Al-Bazouriyah, a village in Jabal Amel near Tyre in Southern Lebanon, where he worked as a fruit and vegetable vendor. Although his family was not particularly religious, Nasrallah showed an early interest in theological studies.
He attended the Al-Najah school and later a public school in Sin el Fil, a predominantly Christian neighborhood of Beirut. In 1975, at the age of 15, Nasrallah and his family were displaced due to the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War and moved to their ancestral home in Bazourieh. He completed his secondary education in Tyre and briefly joined the Amal Movement, a Lebanese Shia political organization founded by Musa al-Sadr.
Nasrallah pursued religious studies at a Shia seminary in Baalbek, which adhered to the teachings of the Iraqi Shi’ite scholar Mohammad Baqir al-Sadr. In 1976, he traveled to Iraq and enrolled in al-Sadr’s seminary in Najaf. It is said that al-Sadr recognized Nasrallah’s leadership qualities, allegedly telling him, “I scent in you the aroma of leadership; you are one of the Ansar [followers] of the Mahdi.”