Kaʿb ibn Mālik: The Poet, and the Rest of His Life

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:

An addendum on the man himself. Kaʿb ibn Mālik was among the two or three most famous poets of Medina. Ḥassān ibn Thābit is better known to us because he specialized in the genre we most enjoy, hijāʾ, the satire and lampooning of the Quraysh, the back-and-forth of insult. Kaʿb's poetry was of a different kind: verses that stirred the Muslims to courage and steadfastness on the battlefield. So though he stood among the same elite of poets, his genre has kept his name less familiar.

❧His bravery, and his long life

It was Kaʿb who, on the day of Uḥud, exchanged his armor for the Prophet's ﷺ so the enemy would take him for the Messenger ﷺ, and was struck by some eleven spears, arrows, and swords for it. He lived on through the reigns of Abū Bakr, ʿUmar, ʿUthmān, and ʿAlī, took part in later jihād, and died in the reign of Muʿāwiyah at about seventy-seven, blind in his last years, which is why his son ʿAbdullāh, who guided him, narrated his story.

❧Where the scholars placed it

The narration is muttafaq ʿalayh, in Bukhārī and Muslim, and also in Ibn Isḥāq and al-Ṭabarī. Tellingly, Bukhārī files it under the Battle of Tabūk, which is logical; but Muslim places it under the chapter of Tawbah and its blessings, equally logical, for the story's deepest lesson is optimism about repentance: that a man who fell into a major sin, disobeying a direct command of the Prophet ﷺ and enduring a fifty-day boycott, could still be forgiven so completely.