Born in Tours in 1930, Alfred-Louis de Prémare spent his childhood in Morocco where he learned Arabic . He studied Arabic language and literature at the Institut des Hautes Etudes Marocaines and Mohammed V University in Rabat .

He joined the Franciscans and studied philosophy and theology in Rabat and Poissy . He specializes in the religion and culture of Islam at the universities of Cairo (magisterium), Lyon and Paris ( doctorate of State , Paris-III, 1984). He teaches at the universities of Constantine ( Algeria ) and Rabat (Morocco). He leaves his religious order.

He is appointed professor at the University of Provence Aix-Marseille I and professor-researcher at the Institute of research and studies on the Arab and Muslim world of Aix-en-Provence ( National Center for Scientific Research ). He devotes himself to research on the first centuries of Arab-Islamic history. Having lived and worked long in Morocco and Algeria, his first academic work focuses on the cultural history of the Maghreb, especially in the xiv th and xvi th centuries.

He finished his teaching career in the Department of Arabic Studies of the Faculty of Arts of Aix-en-Provence where part of his teaching and devoted to the primitive texts of Islam: Koran and biographical traditions of Muhammad. He was professor emeritus at the University of Provence, Aix-Marseille-I.

From 1963 to 1965, then in 1968, he was welcomed at the Dominican Institute of Oriental Studies in Cairo. It is there that he prepared, and then supported in Arabic at the Egyptian State University of Giza , a thesis of magisterium in Arabic language and literature.