Faculty Leader & Educational Resource List

Lecture titles

Exact times for talks by faculty leader Cole Bunzel will be announced by the tour staff during the program.

The Arabian Peninsula and the Early Islamic Dynasties
Wahhabism and the Origins of the Saudi State
Refounding the Kingdom: Prince Mohammed bin Salman and the New Saudi Historiography

Dr. Cole M. Bunzel

Dr. Cole M. Bunzel is a Hoover Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. A historian of Islam and the Middle East, he has written extensively on the history and current affairs of Saudi Arabia. During our program, he will discuss topics including the rise of Islam in the Arabian Peninsula, the origins of the first Saudi state in the mid-18th century, and the emergence and development of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in the twentieth century and beyond.

His forthcoming book, titled Wahhābism: The History of a Militant Islamic Movement, draws on an array of rare manuscripts and other primary resources in Arabic to provide a new account of the history and doctrine of Wahhabism, the puritanical Islamic revivalist movement that arose in Central Arabia in the mid-18th century. This is also the movement that would form the basis of Saudi dynastic rule in Arabia for over 250 years. His other publications include From Paper State to Caliphate: The Ideology of the Islamic States (Brookings Institution, 2015), The Kingdom and the Caliphate: Duel of the Islamic States (Carnegie Endowment, 2016) and Jihadism on Its Own Terms: Understanding a Movement (Hoover Institution, 2017). His current book project is focused on the history of the Sunni jihadi movement (1960s-present), and particularly the religious scholars who contributed to the shaping of jihadi ideology.

Bunzel received his MA in international relations from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and his BA and PhD in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton University, where he received the Bayard and Cleveland Dodge Memorial Dissertation Prize for best PhD dissertation in Near Eastern Studies. He has been a research fellow in Islamic law and civilization at Yale Law School and is a nonresident fellow at the George Washington University Program on Extremism.

Educational Resource List

Much of the enjoyment of travel is in the planning and preparation. Arriving at your destination with some background on the country and its people can make your visit much more rewarding. This list contains recommendations from trip faculty leader Cole Bunzel. Please feel free to shop around on-line or go to your local bookstore or library for these or other trip materials.

Highly Recommended

These 4 resources are highly recommended by trip faculty leader Cole Bunzel.

David Rundell, Vision or Mirage: Saudi Arabia at the Crossroads, I.B. Tauris, 2020
Graeme Wood, “Absolute Power,” The Atlantic, March 3, 2022
Abdelrahman Munif, Cities of Salt, 1984
Kathryn Tidrick, Heart-beguiling Araby: The English Romance with Arabia, 1990

History & Culture

Madawi Al-Rasheed, A History of Saudi Arabia, Cambridge University Press, 2010 (A concise and accessible general history of Saudi Arabia by a leading scholar)
David Commins, The Wahhabi Mission and Saudi Arabia, I.B. Tauris, 2006 (A pathbreaking history of Wahhabism, the peculiar version of Sunni Islam that has been the official faith of the kingdom since the mid-eighteenth century, though that may be changing)
David Rundell, Vision or Mirage: Saudi Arabia at the Crossroads, I.B. Tauris, 2020 (An insider’s look at the Saudi kingdom’s ongoing socio-economic transformation under Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman, aka MBS, by a former American diplomat who spent more than 15 years in the country)
Graeme Wood, “Absolute Power,” The Atlantic, March 3, 2022 (Another look at the kingdom’s ongoing transformation by an engaging journalist, drawing on visits to the kingdom and interviews with MBS)

Travel, Biography & Memoir

Kathryn Tidrick, Heart-beguiling Araby: The English Romance with Arabia, 1990 (There is a rich travel literature centered on journeys to Arabia; Tidrick’s book is a fascinating account of some of these travelers and their journeys, from Richard Burton to Lawrence of Arabia)
Richard Burton, Personal Narrative of Pilgrimage to El-Medinah and Meccah, 1855 (If you’re going to read one of these travelogues, I’d make it this one, by one of Victorian England’s most famous litterateurs)
Muhammad Asad (Leopold Weiss), The Road to Mecca, 1952 (Memoir-cum-travelogue by an Austrian journalist and convert to Islam, also a confidant of King ‘Abd al-‘Aziz ibn Saud (r. 1902-53), founder of the modern Saudi kingdom)
Ameen Rihani, King Ibn Sa’oud of Arabia: His People and His Land, 1928 (An intimate portrait of King ‘Abd al-‘Aziz ibn Saud by an American-Lebanese scholar)

Literature

Abdelrahman Munif, Cities of Salt, 1984 (Perhaps the most famous Saudi novel and hugely popular in the Middle East, Cities of Salt tells the story of a desert oasis transformed and upended by oil)
Rajaa Alsanea, Girls of Riyadh, 2005 (A portrait of the female experience in contemporary Saudi Arabia)
Abdo Khal, Throwing Sparks, 2010 (The story of a young man from the Jeddah slums who becomes a hitman for a mysterious rich businessman)
Raja Alem, The Dove’s Necklace, 2010 (A murder mystery in Mecca, ultimately about the city’s transformation)

News Sites, Videos, YouTube & Podcasts

Arab News (The official, as in government-sponsored, English-language Saudi newspaper)
AlArabiya News (English version of the official Saudi news network)
MBS interview discussing Vision 2030, Saudi Arabia’s economic reform plan, April 2021 (English subtitles)
“Whither Saudi Arabia,” Bernard Haykel, March 2021 (Lecture by a Princeton professor and one of the world’s leading Saudi experts)

Films/Documentaries

Wadjda, 2012 (A popular film about a young and rebellious Saudi girl growing up in the poor suburbs of Riyadh)
The Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, 2019 (Frontline documentary on the kingdom’s most powerful prince)
Death of a Princess, 1980 (A British documentary covering—and recreating—the controversial execution of a Saudi princess and her lover in 1977 for adultery)

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