Encyclopedia of Islam

Further reading: Muhammad Khalid Masud, Brinkley 

Messick, and David S. Powers, Islamic Legal Interpre-

tation: Muftis and Their Fatwas (Cambridge, Mass.: 

Harvard University Press, 1996); Rudolph Peters, Islam 

and Colonialism: The Doctrine of Jihad in Modern History

(The Hague: Mouton, 1979).

Faysal ibn Abd al-Aziz Al Saud

 

(King 

Feisal)

 

(1906–1975)  king of Saudi Arabia from 

1964 to 1975 who inaugurated a significant program 

of economic, governmental, and social modernization 

and strove to unite Muslims against the spread of 

socialism and communism during the cold war era

Faysal was the fourth son of Saudi Arabia’s first 

king, Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud (r. 1926–53) and a 

direct descendant on his mother’s side of m

Uham

-

mad

 

ibn

  a

bd

 

al

-W

ahhab

 (d. 1792), the founder 

of the puritanical Wahhabi movement. Faysal 

was himself a religiously minded man, no doubt 

shaped by his early upbringing in the household 

of his maternal grandfather, a leading Wah-

habi authority. At the age of 14, he was the first 

member of the Saudi family to visit England and