Elegy in Al-Akhiliya’s and Al-Khansa’s Poems: A Comparative Analytical Study

Abstract

There is no doubt that the early stages of Arabic poetry until it reached its current state in the pre-Islamic era were obscure, but it is certain that poetry passed through multiple stages until it reached poetic themes, complete formulations, and precise purposes.  Elegy is one of the eternal purposes related to the human soul and the eternal truth manifested in death. Arabs have known it since their existence and since they knew their inevitable fate, which is death and annihilation. Before poetry, it was manifested in crying, wailing, and screaming over the dead until it became an important poetic purpose, described as the most sincere of poetic purposes, because its subject is related to the issue of death, and its effect penetrates directly to the heart, as it has taken up a large space in the poets’ production, and no poet’s production is devoid of it.      

Since female poets are more emotionally charged and grieve more than male poets, and since the motives that motivate female poets to write elegies are many and varied and you do not find them equal among them, we chose two female poets from two different eras, one of them is Al-Khansa’ who represented elegies in pre-Islamic poetry, and the other is Layla Al-Akhiliya who embodied elegies in the Umayyad era.