Wasf (description and attribute)

وَصْف

Wasf in the lexicon is description, and to describe a thing is to name it; a doctor describes a medicine when he names it and gives its dose. Technically it is a term for what points to an essence by a meaningful attribute; for the usulis it restricts a word of shared meaning by another, specific word that is neither a condition nor an end. ¹ Most jurists hold that a sale by description is valid as a sale by sight, since description gives knowledge of the object; in the preferred Shafi'i view the sale of an absent object not seen by the buyer is not valid, even if described at length, because of the prohibition on uncertain sales. ¹ In a salam contract the goods must be described as a debt in the buyer's favour by attributes that fix them, and the Shafi'is require the attributes to be named in the contract itself, not after it. ¹² In usul, attaching a ruling to a fitting attribute shows that attribute to be its cause, which is called an allusion. ² The concept of the attribute (mafhum al-sifa) means that a ruling tied to one attribute of a thing is read by Shafi'i, Malik and most as excluding the ruling from what lacks it; Abu Hanifa and a group of Malikis and Shafi'is, including al-Ghazali, deny that. ²