He is well-known for originally writing the Tunisian national anthem "Defenders of the Homeland" (Arabic: حماة الحمى; romanized: Humat al-Hima) Al-Rafe'ie was born into a family of notable lineage, his maternal grandfather, Sheikh Eltoukhy, originally from Aleppo.

Rafi did not last long in the field of poetry, he gave it up and started writing prose because he found more desire for it.

[2] Before the phenomenon of his withdrawal from poetry, it becomes clear that he was right in this position; despite the success he achieved in this literary field, and although he was able to attract attention, but in fact he could not surpass the status achieved by the great poets of his time, especially Ahmed Shawqi Hafiz Ibrahim, these two expressed in two poems the feelings and anxieties of thepeople of this generation.

[4] The first area into which Al-Rafi, constrained by weight and rhyme, moved was that of poetic prose, free to express his archaic emotions that filled his heart and not to go beyond them, to actions beyond moral and religious obligations, as he had envisioned them to be.

[5] His quote, "What is the absurdity of life if it does not indicate its honor and value to some living people whom we see in a world of dust, as if their material were Clouds, in which for others there is shadow, water and breeze, but for themselves there is purity, height and beauty".