Asma' bint Marwan's verses reviling the Ansar for obeying 'the stranger'

Four verses that Ibn Ishaq attributes to Asma bint Marwan, and says she composed "to disparage Islam and its people". ¹ They open with a coarse insult to Banu Malik, Banu Nabit, Awf and Banu al-Khazraj. She then says that they obeyed a stranger, an "atawi", meaning a man from outside your own tribes, neither of Murad nor of Madhhij, whom you hope for after your leaders were killed, as one hopes for the broth of a cooked cooking-pot. The verses end by wishing for a proud man who refuses humiliation, seeking to deceive him and cut off the hope of the one who hopes. ² The sense is given here; the text is read in the edition, which the editors printed as it stands.

Hassan ibn Thabit answered her with verses in the same metre; see his reply. ²

The poem is evidence of the language of opposition in Medina. To her, the Prophet ﷺ is a stranger, an "atawi", with no lineage among the Yemeni tribes to which the Ansar trace their descent, and the Ansar had lost their leaders at Badr and Uhud. It contains an open incitement to kill him, which is the key to reading the account in the entry on her killing. ²