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Mohammed made his personal slave and one of the earliest converts to join
his gang, Zaid, the leader of this expedition. He gave him an army of 30,000
and also deputed another burly roughneck named Jaffar to accompany Zaid as
the leader of the army. Mohamed wanted to win this battle so desperately
that he decided in advance that there was to be no retreat, and if Zaid was
killed, Jaffar would lead the Army, and if Jaffar was killed,
Khalid-ibn-walid was to lead the army. Mohammed was desperate for a
spectacular victory, since Mecca still lay unsubdued in the South and the
Quraish had started to make overtures to the Persians and Romans to help
them defeat Mohammed. So Mohammed had to nip these efforts in the bud, by
defeating one of the prospective allies of the Quraish.

He also asked Umar, another blood-thirsty killer to accompany the army.
Later, Umar was to lead the gang of Muslims, as their Khalifa (Caliph) after
Mohammed was poisoned by one of his victims and after Mohammed's successor
and father-in-law Abba (Abu) Bakr died after leading the gang of murderous
Muslims for four years. Incidentally, Umar in turn was murdered by Utman,
his successor.

But here at the battle of Mu'ta, the disciplined Roman legions and phalanxes
caught the Arab Muslim hordes in an impossible position and the result was a
massacre of the Arab Muslims. Their ganglord Zaid, Mohammed's trusted slave
was killed, and so was his lieutenant Jaffar, When Umar faced the phalanxes,
he chose to turn tail and run into the desert. The band of Arabs being
leaderless, Khalid-ibn-Walid who was then a new convert tried to rally the
gangsters and promised a rich booty. But thieves and thugs rather run for
their lives instead of risking them just for a chance to loot. With the
merciless attack from the Roman phalanxes, the murderous but unruly Muslims
broke ranks and fled.

Ultimately Khalid-ibn-walid also sought safety in flight. Thus ended the
first encounter of the bloodthirsty Muslims with the Roman legions. The
Arabic word Rumi (for Roman) is still a term of derision used by the Arabs
to refer to Westerners