Alfred Le Chatelier

Frédéric Alfred Le Chatelier was a French soldier, ceramicist and Islamologist. He spent most of his military career in the French African colonies. After leaving the army he was involved in a project to build a railway in the French Congo. He fought a duel and killed his opponent over mutual accusations of improper conduct concerning the Congo railways. He founded and ran a ceramics workshop for a few years before becoming a professor of Islamic Sociology at the Collège de France from 1902 to 1925. He exerted considerable influence over French policy towards the Muslim subjects of France's colonial empire, arguing for policy based on solidly documented facts, and for tolerance and sympathy to the rapidly changing Muslim societies.