Talk:Ancient Arabic units of measurement

Nice, but...
Needs a bit more work, and citations. Xaa 23:56, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Arabic Arsh
If the Arsh was traditionally 2 feet, than there were some of Goliath's-kin walking around in the mid-east.

A 24" Arsh would indicate guy about 7 feet tall! compared to the usual 18 inches of average men back then.

true conversion
Well, according to, a farasakh فرسخ was rather 4828.03 meters. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Christoph Scholz (talk • contribs) 16:02, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Based on Persian
Why not based on earlier Middle Eastern system that existed in the area and which the Arabic language and Arab traditions, customs and history is extensively and directly related? --Maha Odeh (talk) 19:27, 8 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I vaguely recall having read somewhere that the Persians borrowed a lot from the Romans, who in turn borrowed much from the Greeks. The dinar, for example, was supposedly borrowed from from the denarius aureus (gold penny) via the Persians. Zyxwv99 (talk) 17:54, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Units
As Egil mentions in this edit It seems unlikely that each unit will have it's own artilce. It might be appropriate to build redirects from the listed and other reasonable translations to this article. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 11:55, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

What about weights?
In my study of European weights and measures, I keep running into a mass unit called the "rotl." The monetary weights of Anglo-Saxon Britain were based on two different versions of the rotl. Offa, King of Mercia, issued a silver penny that was exactly 1/2 silver dirham in weight, or 1/480 of one particular sort of rotl. (The penny weighted 22 1/2 troy grains or 32 Anglo-Saxon wheat grains.) Another sort of pennyweight was 48 troy grains, based on a somewhat larger sort of rotl.

The point is, there should be mass units here, going back to the Caliphate, and maybe continuing their history to 1920, i.e., the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. In which case maybe the word ancient should be re-thought. Zyxwv99 (talk) 18:03, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

More units
This map gives giam (11 mi / 18 km) and also caravan travelling hours (2.5 mi / 4 km) and "great miles of Arabia", equal to 1/50 of a degree of latitude. (2.2 km / 1.4 mi) https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f5/1794_Boulton_and_Anville_Wall_Map_of_Africa_%28most_important_18th_cntry_map_of_Africa%29_-_Geographicus_-_Africa2-boulton-1794.jpg Debbiesw (talk) 21:09, 28 September 2016 (UTC)