Kaʿb ibn Mālik Stays Behind: Procrastination and the Empty City

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:

One of the most beloved stories of the Sīrah is Kaʿb ibn Mālik's own account of Tabūk, a three-page first-person narration in Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī (with added detail from al-Ṭabarī and others), told by his son ʿAbdullāh, who guided him after he went blind in old age. It is, with the slander of ʿĀʾishah, one of the two great first-person stories of the Sīrah, and it hits home for its vivid, emotional detail. That Kaʿb told his own son of his failure is the finest tarbiyah: no one is perfect, and the lesson is not the mistake but how it is put right.

❧Who he was

Kaʿb was of the Anṣār, of Banū Salima, the tribe the Prophet ﷺ told, يَا بَنِي سَلِمَةَ دِيَارَكُمْ، تُكْتَبْ آثَارُكُمْ, "stay in your homes; your footsteps are being recorded" (which some link to Yā-Sīn 36:12, "We record what they sent ahead and their footprints"). He accepted Islam before the Hijrah and was among the seventy-odd at the Second Pledge of ʿAqabah, of the elite of the Anṣār. He opens by listing his record: he had missed no ghazwah but Tabūk (and Badr, for which no one was blamed, as it began as a raid on the caravan, not a battle), and ʿAqabah, he said, was dearer to him than Badr though Badr is more famous. This is legitimate pride and muḥāsabat al-nafs: the Companions kept their good deeds in mind, a résumé for the Ākhirah, and it also sets the stage, judge a man by his whole record, not a single slip.

❧No excuse and the poverty of the Ṣaḥābah

"I was never fitter or wealthier than just before Tabūk," he said. "By Allāh, I had never owned two she-camels until then." The two valid excuses were infirmity or lack of means, the army was self-financed, a camel shared among two or three men, and Kaʿb had neither. That two camels was, for him, a mark of wealth shows how poor that generation was: the average Companion owned no camel, and the Prophet ﷺ himself had none until he bought one from Abū Bakr for the Hijrah.

❧The open announcement, and procrastination

Unlike other campaigns, which he concealed by tawriyah, setting out in a false direction, the Prophet ﷺ announced Tabūk openly: the fierce heat, the vast distance, the desert, and the great enemy all demanded real preparation, and it was farḍ ʿayn on every able man, so to stay was a major sin. Some ten days were given to prepare. Kaʿb would go out each day meaning to equip himself, and come back having done nothing, "I can do it tomorrow", until the army marched at Fajr and he had done nothing at all, telling himself he would catch up in a day or two. Then that day passed, and the next, and it was too late. This is the evil of procrastination, al-taswīf. As Ibn al-Jawzī said, it is Shayṭān's greatest weapon; and Ibn al-Qayyim: "Whenever a door of good opens before you, the doors of 'perhaps' and 'soon' open to compete with it." The Qurʾān is all action and haste, سَارِعُوا إِلَىٰ مَغْفِرَةٍ مِّن رَّبِّكُمْ, قُمْ فَأَنذِرْ, وَعَجِلْتُ إِلَيْكَ رَبِّ لِتَرْضَىٰ. Kaʿb never decided not to go; Shayṭān simply delayed him until the chance was gone, and he walked a Medina emptied of all but the infirm and the known hypocrites.