Elegy of Cities in Arabic and Persian Poetry:A Comparative Study from the Beginning to the End of the Abbasid Caliphate

The Elegy of cities is one kind of elegy in which a poet describes the stricken cities, pains and agonies of people of the cities undergone destruction and devastation. This research is a historical - comparative study of this genre in Persian and Arabic literature. It shows that these elegies in both Arabic and Persian Literature have the same political and internal reasons, such as the assault and the attack of the foreigners to the Islamic realms. Consequently, the Iranian and Arabic poets referred to this event as the calamity of the Muslim Ummah. They elegize about the Islamic cities regardless of geographical and linguistic boundaries. In addition, the Religious and cultural commonalities of the Arabic and Persian literary scholars lead to a one-sided point of view towards many concepts of the city elegies which is very telling of the connection between two Ummahs since the ancient times. These Persian and Arabic odes are similar in their use of sincere and honest sentiments, plain and modest diction and also because of their pervasion with wisdom, advice and religious concepts such as fatalism. These elegies are also considered as part of a historical source of the stricken cities.