Shiraz: The City of Brightness in Al-Bayati's Poetry

After achieving many innovative developments, human beings left the villages and inhabited in cities. In every period in the history of mankind, cities have been the center of human evolutions and almost all cities have had similar features. After the Renaissance, cities, more than the past, took men into their gears. This issue hurt poets more than others. The dominance of certain socio-political conditions over the cities led to the spiritual and social alienation of poets. In Arab countries, too, after experiencing the socio- political changes, the same situation occurred for poets. The contemporary Arabic literature influenced by the Western literature, criticized city and its effects on people's lives. In contemporary Arabic poetry, Abdolvahhab Al-Bayati has dealt with this issue more than his counterparts. In the present research, after reviewing some points about city, the most important topics related to this word such as utopia and the appearance of city portrayed as prostitute are reviewed. Then, relying on Al-Bayati's political perspective, Baghdad, Babel, Neishabour, Paris and Shiraz, which in his poetries, have significance and high-frequency, have been studied. The findings of the study show that except Shiraz, the main characteristics of these cities are corruption, destruction, and darkness; and that only Shiraz is full of beauty and light and is the opposite point of those cities.