Discover the meaning of the term Waaʿlam (وَاعْلَم) in Islamic vocabulary.
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Updated on 11 April 2026 at 1:05 AM
📖 2 min readKnow that the first of the four proportional numbers used in transactions is called, by convention, the unit price, according to the form of the passive participle derived from price-setting, and the second of them is called the price, or vice versa. The third of these numbers is called the valued item, according to the form of the passive participle from the expression: I assigned the man his merchandise's price when I delivered its price to him, and the fourth of them is called the price, or vice versa. If the unit price is the first, the valued item must be the third, and if the unit price is the second, the price must be the fourth. Three of these numbers are always known, namely the first, the second, and one of the remaining two, while one of them is unknown, being either the third or the fourth. This is because, since people have a need for transactions, they have the unit prices of things circulated among them and their prices well-known to most of them. Thus, the first and second of the aforementioned four numbers are known to them. Then, at the time of exchange and counter-value, it is inevitable that either they possess a valued item and wish to sell it, or they possess a price and wish to buy a valued item. Under both assumptions, one of the remaining two is also known to them, while the other remains unknown, which is the price in the former case and the valued item in the latter. Consequently, three of the four numbers are always known, the first two and one of the remaining two, and one of the remaining two remains unknown.