English Orientalist Alfred J. Butler, his life and Method in his book, Al – Arabs Conquered Egypt

Abstract

Alfred J. Butler is one of the English orientalists who played an important role in studying the history and civilization of Egypt, as he was an Egyptian mentally Arab in culture, spending the greater part of his life devoted to studying life in the Nile Valley and the history of his ancient civilization, as it traces the traces of Coptic churches and monasteries in Egypt, As the Orientalists in general, and the Englishmen in particular, did not call a scientific or epistemic aspect to the Muslims except to study it and write about it, they exerted a great effort in studying Islam and Muslims with an idea, belief and behavior, as these efforts were not all scientific and we find some of them have cognitive factors with Political, economic and colonial factors, and in this way their study included various civilizational and scientific aspects of the East, and Alfred J. Butler was one of these orientalists, as he primarily concerned with the study of Egypt and its civilization, and after his book Al-Arab Conquered Egypt his most important books, in this topic we discussed his life and his approach in his book Al-Arab Conquered Egypt, as he divided it to thirty chapters in which he dealt with the period before the Islamic conquest of Egypt, then he dealt with the Islamic conquest until he concluded the conquest process.