Hoorelbeke Mathias

Hoorelbeke Mathias serves as a Lecturer and Director of the Department of Arabic Studies at the National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilizations (INALCO) in Paris, holding concurrent roles as MEEF master referent (2020–present) and CFVE member (2022–2025). His academic profile centers on Classical Arabic language and literature within the Near and Middle East specialization framework.

His research investigates Abbasid-era poetic production through lenses of patronage dynamics, satirical jousting (hijāʾ), and homoerotic expression, with particular focus on textual analysis of the Kitāb al-Aġānī and biographical traditions. Key interests include rhetorical strategies for negotiating poet-patron relationships, landscape representation in travel narratives, and socio-political contexts of early Islamic literary culture, reflecting deep engagement with pre-modern Arabic philological traditions.

Publication analysis reveals consistent methodological focus on 8th–9th century Abbasid poetry, examining how rhetorical devices like gift-giving tropes and spatial metaphors facilitated social mobility. His work frequently centers on canonical texts such as the Book of Songs while recovering marginalized voices including homoerotic poets and pre-Islamic biographical subjects, demonstrating interdisciplinary approaches bridging literary criticism and historical anthropology.

Hoorelbeke Mathias contributes to the CERMOM (Centre d'Études et de Recherches sur les Mondes Contemporains) research ecosystem at INALCO, where his historical scholarship intersects with the institute's contemporary Middle Eastern studies framework through shared methodological rigor in textual analysis and cultural interpretation.