Frédéric Alfred Le Chatelier was born on 12 November 1855 in Paris at 84 rue de Vaugirard in the center of a district of art and ceramic studios.

[3] Although interested in natural sciences, Alfred chose to join the army and attended the École spéciale militaire de Saint-Cyr He obtained his diploma in 1874 and degree in 1876.

Le Chatelier opened a school, had wells dug, improved sanitation, established a court and met regularly with the local elders.

[2] Between 1886 and 1890 Le Chatelier served with a regiment in France but was allowed to travel widely in Morocco, West Africa, Egypt and Turkey.

[4] Le Chatelier wrote several books and brochures for the African section of the État-major général which had great influence on Paul Marty, who would later write at length about Islam in West Africa.

Le Chatelier gained deep knowledge of Islamic societies in the Middle East and North Africa, and came to believe that the French fear of Pan-Islamic conspiracies had no foundation.

[10] In 1887 Le Chatelier wrote Les Confréries Musulmanes de Hijaz, a useful and scholarly monograph that showed the importance in Africa of the Sufi brotherhoods.

[11] In 1890–91 Le Chatelier was a member of the Minister of War Charles de Freycinet's cabinet with the mandate of monitoring debates in the Chamber of Deputies.

[10] Freycinet arranged for Le Chatelier to take a year's leave to study Islam in Africa, and he spent time in Dahomey and the French Congo.

[12] Le Chatelier was a charter member of the Comité de l'Afrique française, a lobby group that was becoming active in the French Congo.

[13] Le Chatelier invested much of his personal fortune in the railway scheme, and suffered great loss when the government came out in favour of a rival project headed by Harry Alis, another founding member of the Comité de l'Afrique française.

[12] On 2 March 1895 Le Chatelier fought a duel at the Moulin Rouge restaurant in Neuilly with Harry Alis (Léon Hippolyte Percher), editor of the Journal des débats.

In 1901 the critic Henri Cazalis (alias Jean Lahor), listed the workshop as one of the best producers in France of Art Nouveau ceramics.

[3] Le Chatelier remained in contact with politics, and provided detailed instructions to the 1898 trans-Sahara expedition organised by Fernand Foureau and Captain François Amédée Lamy, whom he had known before in the French Congo and the Sahara.

[16] In April 1900 Le Chatelier wrote and printed the brochure Lettre à un Algérien sur la politique saharienne, which he sent to leading politicians.

Eugène Étienne and Paul Révoil both supported the brochure, and Le Chatelier was established as a force to be considered in setting North African policy.

[22] Le Chatelier played a key part in documenting the ethnic groups of Morocco, and inspired and supervised preparation of the multi-volume Archives marocaines and the Villes et Tribus du Maroc series.

[25] By contrast, Edmond Doutté and the École d'Alger thought France should impose a secular and technocratic state independent of the Islamic leaders.

[21] The journal covered contemporary Islamic societies around the world, a group of vital communities with a shared tradition adapting quickly to the new order.