There’s no shortage of documentaries or books tracing the “road to 9/11,” or the decadeslong wars that followed in the attack’s wake. But surely one of those paths both began and ended on a street in Peshawar, Pakistan, in November 1989, not far from a mosque on a dead-end road.

Many of the architects of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks are well known. But one of the key figures in the creation of al Qaeda has largely been overlooked in major news accounts. Abdullah Azzam made al Qaeda and all its evils possible.