Arabic (بيع المجهول) for a type of bay’ al-gharar in which the object of sale or the price (thaman) is unknown, or in the case of a deferred price, the settlement date is unknown. As such, the sale becomes invalid (batil) because of uncertainty as to the price, object of sale, or settlement date. Most often, uncertainty results in disputes (munaza’ah) between the contracting parties (and hence comes the shari’a basis for impermissibility). An example is the sale of an unidentified good (e.g., piece of cloth) out of two or more. However, bay’ al-majhool is usually valid for settlement dates linked to some identifiable events such as harvest times, hajj, etc. This sale may also be permissible if it is embedded with an option of choice (khiyar al-ta’yeen) (in which case the transaction is called bay’ al-ikhtiyar), provided that the objects of sale are identical in terms of genus, kind, category, and price (otherwise, the sale is impermissible).

Based on ijma’a (consensus of fuqaha), gharar yaseer (low amount of uncertainty) in commutative contracts (uqud al-mua’wadhah) can be ignored or overlooked, i.e., it doesn’t render a contract impermissible or invalid (e.g., a buyer unknowledgeable of the state of a building’s foundations as such contractual aspects are not always known for certain). Different mazhahib (schools of thought) agree that bay’ al-majhool which involves an excessive degree of gharar (gharar fahish) is forbidden/ impermissible by shari’a.