Originally trained as a classicist, he started to study Arabic after a journey to the Levant in 1974. He first graduated in Philosophy and English,[5] then completed his Arabic language studies at the French Institute in Damascus (1977–78), and received his degree in Political Science from Sciences Po in Paris in 1980.[5] He specialized in contemporary Islamist movements, and spent three years at the Centre d'études et de documentation économiques, juridiques et sociales (CEDEJ) where he did the fieldwork for his PhD[2] (defended in 1983) on “Islamist movements in Egypt”,[6] which would be translated and published in the UK in 1985 in English as The Prophet and Pharaoh (US: Muslim Extremism in Egypt, 1986). This was the first book in any language to analyze contemporary Islamist militants, and it remains a standard reader to this day in universities worldwide.[7]