Abdullah ibn Rawaha
A poet Companion of the Ansar; the third commander to fall as a martyr at the Battle of Mu'ta. His full name is Abu Muhammad Abd Allah ibn Rawaha ; he was also known by the kunyas Abu Rawaha and Abu Amr. He was the son of Rawaha ibn Tha'laba of the Banu al-Harith branch of the Khazraj tribe. He was one of the mukhadram poets, and devoted his art solely to defending the Prophet and the religion of Islam and satirising the polytheists. The Messenger of God's well-known saying about him, “His poetry is more effective against the polytheists than arrows”, reflects his view of his poetic power, and the saying “Your brother does not speak vain and idle words” his view of his character. When verses 224-226 of Surat al-Shu'ara, which say that poets wander bewildered in every valley, were revealed, he expressed his sorrow, saying “God knows that I too am a poet, so I am one of them”; thereupon verse 227 was revealed, beginning “Except those who believe and do righteous deeds...”. Besides his poetry he had very moving powers of oratory. Because he could read and write, was a sensitive poet, an orator and a skilled warrior, of great courage and of advanced asceticism and piety, he won the Prophet's special favour and trust. At the Second Pledge of Aqaba he was chosen by the Muslims of Medina as one of the twelve naqibs ; the Prophet also took him among his private scribes. He took part in the battles of Badr, Uhud, the Trench and Khaybar and in the expeditions of Hudaybiya and the Umrat al-Qada; during the Umrat al-Qada he held the halter of the Prophet's camel throughout the rites. He also transmitted hadith. He carried the good news of the victory of Badr to Medina together with Zayd ibn Haritha, and during the second Badr expedition (Badr al-Maw'id) he remained in Medina as the Prophet's deputy. Before the Khaybar campaign the Prophet sent him to Khaybar as commander of a four-man detachment with the order: “Watch Khaybar, mingle with the people, learn what they are saying and what they intend to do.” After his return he was sent to Khaybar as envoy at the head of a delegation of thirty; after the conquest he was given authority over the sharing of Khaybar's produce with the Jewish sharecroppers. Earlier, during the Battle of the Trench, he had been one of the four-man delegation sent to the Banu Qurayza. On the basis of these missions the source records the possibility that he knew Hebrew. When Shurahbil ibn Amr, one of the Ghassanid chiefs, killed al-Harith ibn Umayr, who was carrying a letter of the Messenger of God, the Prophet in the year 8 (629) placed over the army of 3000 men then raised, in order, Zayd ibn Haritha, Ja'far ibn Abi Talib and Abd Allah ibn Rawaha; should one be martyred, the next would take command. While the army was encamped at Ma'an it came face to face with the Byzantine army, reported to number 100,000 or 200,000. During the two days spent at Ma'an some wished to inform the Prophet of the situation and act on his decision; Abd Allah ibn Rawaha, however, said that they had set out to attain martyrdom and drew their strength to fight not from numbers and weapons but from the religion of Islam that God had bestowed on them, and on these words the decision to fight was taken. The two armies drew up in battle order at Mu'ta (Jumada al-Ula 8 / September 629). When Zayd ibn Haritha and then Ja'far ibn Abi Talib had fallen as martyrs, Abd Allah ibn Rawaha took the banner; after a while he too was martyred. The banner passed through the hands of Ka'b ibn Umayr and Thabit ibn Arqam to Khalid ibn al-Walid. Meanwhile the Prophet, in the Prophet's Mosque, related the course of events on the battlefield and the martyrdom of the commanders one after another. Abd Allah ibn Rawaha is counted among the names of the fifteen martyred at Mu'ta. The sources record that he left no children when he fell. His Poetry and Sufi Line — His small body of poetry, including nearly fifty verses in Ibn Hisham's al-Sira , lies scattered in various works of sira, history, maghazi and tabaqat. His poems of the Jahiliyya are replies to the lampoons against the Khazraj by Qays ibn al-Khatim, a poet of the hostile tribe of Aws. His poems of the Islamic period are improvised rajaz verses answering the poems and verbal attacks of the Quraysh polytheists against Islam and the Prophet; they are in a plain language the common people could easily understand, without rhetorical ornament or rare words. He satirised the Quraysh polytheists not for their tribal and personal failings, as did his contemporaries Ka'b ibn Malik and Hassan ibn Thabit, but for their unbelief and their persistence in it. It is related that during the Battle of the Trench, while helping those carrying the earth of the trench, covered in dust, the Prophet recited with the Companions this poem of his: “By God, had God not guided us we would not have been guided, nor given alms nor prayed… O Lord, keep our feet firm when we meet the enemy and send down steadfastness upon us.” His Works — The sources mention no diwan of his. Walid Qassab published 37 pieces of his poetry, collected from various sources and totalling 217 verses, the shortest of one verse and the longest of 26, under the title Diwan Abd Allah ibn Rawaha wa-dirasa fi siratihi wa-shi'rihi (Riyadh 1402); six of them belong to the Jahiliyya. His Tomb and Complex — Mu'ta is a place with broad farmlands south of the Dead Sea, 11 km from Karak and 50 km from Jerusalem. Today, at the site of the battle, there are the remains of the historic Mu'ta Mosque and, 500 m from it, the tombs of the three commanders who fell as martyrs. Recently the names of the martyrs of Mu'ta were inscribed on a monument, and a mosque ( Jami' al-Mashhad ) was built beside it.