[9] Kaukab was founded next to a grave attributed to Husam al-Din Abu'l-Hayja, one of Saladin's generals, and is holy to the local Muslims.

[6] Abu'l-Hayja was an Iraqi Kurd and commander of the Kurdish forces that took part in Sultan Saladin's conquest of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem in the 1180s.

Abu'l-Hayja apparently returned to Iraq, but several members of his family remained in the country under orders from Saladin, and these family members settled on spacious tracts of land that they were granted in the Carmel region, in the Lower, Eastern and Western Galilee, and in the Hebron Highlands.

[6] Abu'l-Hayja returned to Iraq after Saladin's conquest of Jerusalem in 1187, and he apparently died and was buried there.

[10][11] In 1875, the French explorer Victor Guérin visited Kaukab, and described it as a small village with about 250 inhabitants, situated on a mountain at an altitude of 425 meters above the sea level.

[14] In 1938, during the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine, the village was destroyed and its threshing floors burnt by British troops during a revenge mission.

[3] In 2020, a tender was offered by the Ministry of Tourism and Israel Land Administration for the construction of a hotel and tourist resort in the village.

The compound includes a plan for 120 accommodation units and space for shops, pools, parks, sports fields and more.

The decision was made in light of a rise in pilgrim tourism to Israel which creates new opportunities for the Galilee thanks to its religious, archeological and natural sites.

Kaukab joins Shibli–Umm al-Ghanam, where a tender for hotel construction in a Bedouin village was offered for the first time in history.