Allah, the Most High, has said: ‘Two men of those who feared God, unto whom God had been gracious’ (till the end of the verse). It is said that in this blessed verse the words ‘two men’ point to Yoshua’ and Kalûb.* The majority of theologians assert that he was a Divine messenger, and support their opinion by many quotations from the text of the Mosaic Law.
When Yoshua’ departed to the eternal mansion, and had entrusted all the affairs of the children of Esrâil to the care of Kalûb in his last will and injunctions, the latter began to govern the people, who obeyed him in all things. After Kalûb had arranged the religious and secular concerns, he ordered a great army to be enlisted, with whose victorious standards he started on an expedition for the purpose of attacking King Bâruq, and turned the conquering reins towards the region of Salam. When his august forces arrived in that country, they surrounded those mountains without any delay or procrastination, and having put to flight all who resisted, took possession of the citadel, and killed nearly two thousand of the rebels in the defiles and passes of the mountains, shaking the abode of the stability of those accursed ones to its foundations by the fiery wind of their attack. Bâruq, with many of his courtiers and adherents, fell into captivity; those who escaped the sword were scattered in deserts and mountains like locusts, and the effects of Kalûb’s prayers having overtaken them, all their sown fields, gardens, benefits, and comforts perished, so that everyone who had saved his life spent it henceforth in mendicancy, or supported it by collecting wood in misery and exile.
It is said that Bâruq had in his prison fifty kings whose fingers he had cut off,* and whom he was in the habit of bringing forward when he was at dinner, and of throwing crumbs of bread at them, for which they contended with each other like hungry dogs, and picked them up with their mouths. When Kalûb heard this he ordered Bâruq to be dealt with precisely in the same manner, and to be fed as he had been feeding others.
After obtaining this glorious victory by the favour of the Bestower and Creator—w. n. b. e.—Kalûb returned from that country and marched to Egypt. The children of Esrâil maintained themselves in the undisputed possession of the whole of Syria, with a portion of Egypt, and lived in comfort. Kalûb governed the people, and attended to the duties of his prophetic dignity, until his departure from this world approached, when he appointed his son Yusâqûs to be his successor, took leave of his life, and surrendered the jewel of his vitality to the grasper of souls:
| Verses: | The king of the world abandons the world, Another sovereign takes possession thereof. Such is the custom of this changing inn, That it gives joy with wealth, and grief with pain anon. |
As historians and chroniclers have not recorded his personal description, the duration of his mission and life, nor the place of his sepulture, it was impossible to narrate them in this place.