The sale (bay’) of a measurable, countable, or weighable commodity without determining its quantity, number of units, or weight. This usually involves foodstuffs such as meat, vegetables, dates, grain, etc. Shari’a considers this sale invalid until the purchaser has received the underlying goods (i.e., taking possession or qabd is an indispensable precondition for the sale to be shari’a-compatible). This sale has many forms, including:
- bay’ al-subrah.
- bay’ al-juzaf of non-fungible, countable and measurable items (such as heads of cattle, pieces of land, clothes, etc). According to the majority of fuqaha (jumhur), this form is permissible (Abu Haneefah and Ibn al-Qattan opined otherwise).
- bay’ al-juzaf of a ribawi item for a ribawi item of the same type (e.g. ba’i al-muzabanah in which fresh dates are sold for dried dates). This form of bay’ al-juzaf is prohibited by shari’a for the potentiality of riba (with respect to ribawi items, the applicable rule is “ignorance in case of similarity is identical to knowledge in case of inequality”.
Bay’ al-juzaf is an Arabic term that denotes a “sale by estimation”, “sale in gross“, or “lump-sum sale”.
