Ziane was born in Southern Andalucia, the son of an affluent Riffian merchant and a Spanish lady, and spent the first years of his life in Málaga, before settling with his father in Tangiers during the mid 1950s, where he was raised by his paternal grandmother. Ziane has declared that his grandfather was the cousin of Abdelkrim al-Khattabi, and stressed his belonging to the Beni Ouryaghel Rifian tribe.
