Dr. Zacharie Mochtari de Pierrepont is a specialist of Medieval Western Arabia, with a focus on late medieval Yemeni and Hijazi history. He currently holds the position of FWO Senior Research fellow at Ghent University.
His academic journey includes a Ph.D. in Medieval History from the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, where he explored the history of the Rasulid sultanate (626-858/1229-1454) and the spread of blessed lineages in Yemen. Following his doctoral work, he expanded his research scope to include Egyptian and Hijâzî historiography of the late medieval period. Currently, his academic pursuits encompass a broader geographical and thematic range, including the history of Yemen and the Hijâz, the Red Sea area and late medieval Arabic historical writings, with a focus on Yemen, Hijaz, and Egypt.
He is presently leading the YemenARC (Yemen, Rural Communities, and Tribes: Society, Economy and Power) project at Ghent University.
The YemenARC project examines the historical role of Yemeni rural communities, predominantly tribal, between the 7th/13th and 9th/15th centuries. Using the rich corpus of late medieval Yemen, administrative documents and historiographical sources, the project explores how rural communities and tribal groups shaped Yemen’s social, cultural, and economic life. It investigates the organization, interactions, and representations of these communities, as well as their relationship with regional authorities. The project employs an innovative interdisciplinary approach combining social history, prosopography, spatial analysis, and digital humanities methods to provide new insights into the rural and tribal histories of medieval Yemen and the broader Middle East.
