A type of sale (ba’i) in which the object of sale is not available at the contracting session (majlis al-aqd) so that the buyer does not know its features/specifications. The object of sale is thus neither seen nor inspected by the buyer. Hence, this sale may involve excessive gharar (or gharar fahish), rendering it invalid (batil) from a shari’a point of view. However, if the two parties are satisfied with the terms without the buyer seeing the object of sale then it is valid, provided that it genus or kind has been well known to the buyer.
Ba’i al-ghayib (in Arabic script: بيع الغائب) is a subcategory of ba’i al-sifah (بيع الصفة).
