The poetic memorialization of the Maghribī city illuminates the ways in which exilic Maghribī poets constructed idealized images of their native cities from the ninth century to the nineteenth century CE. The first work of its kind in English, Of Lost Cities explores the poetics and politics of elegiac and nostalgic representation of the Maghribī city and sheds light on the ingeniously indigenous and indigenously ingenious manipulation of the classical Arabic (sub)genres of city elegy and nostalgia for one’s homeland. Often over-looked, the distinctive Maghribī, classical and vernacular, Arabic (and Tamazight) poetry deserves wider recognition in the broader tradition and canon of (post)classical Arabic poetry. Alongside close readings of Maghribī poets such as Ibn Rashīq, Ibn Sharaf, al-Ḥuṣrī al-Ḍarīr, Ibn Ḥammād al-Ṣanhājī, Ibn Khamīs, Abū al-Fatḥ al-Tūnisī, al-Tuhāmī Amghār, and Ibn al-Shāhid, Nizar Hermes provides a comparative analysis using Western theories of place, memory, and nostalgia. Containing the first translations into English of many poetic gems of premodern and precolonial Maghribī poetry, Of Lost Cities reveals the enduring power of poetry in capturing the essence of lost cities and the complex interplay of memory, loss, and nostalgia.