6. Glossary of Measures, Weights, and Monetary Units
Definitions of weights and measures have changed across time and place in Egyptian history. The following is primarily based on the definitions offered by the Mamluk-era author al-Qalqashandī as interpreted by Walther Hinz[1] and Eliyahu Ashtor,[2] and corroborated by the internal evidence in the Villages of the Fayyum.
Fractions
Al-Nābulsī uses combinations of the following terms to designate fractions of all types of units, including monetary units, units of volume and units of length and surface:
- niṣf= half, 1/2.
- thulth= third, 1/3.
- rubʿ= quarter, 1/4.
- suds= sixth, 1/6 (and also half a sixth, 1/12).
- thumn= eighth, 1/8 (and also half an eighth, 1/16).
- qīrāṭ= carat, 1/24 (and also half a carat 1/48; a quarter of a carat, 1/96).[3]
- ḥabba= literally ‘grain’, 1/72.
- dāniq= From Persian, dāng, literally ‘a sixth’, 1/144.[4]
Dry Measures (Volume)
- ardabb= about 90 liters, holding approximately 69.6 kg. of wheat and 56 kg. of barley.[5]
- wayba= 1/6 ardabb = 15 liters, or 11.6 kg. of wheat.[6]
Length
- dhirāʿ (also dhirāʿ al-ʿamal) = cubit/ work cubit = 65.6 cm.[7]
- qaṣaba (lit. ‘cane’, or ‘reed’) = 6 dhirāʿ= about 3.9 m.[8]
- qabḍa (lit. ‘a fist’s width’) = 1/6 dhirāʿ= about 10.9 cm.[9]
Square Measures (Area)
Weight
- qinṭār= 45 kg = 100 raṭl.[11]
- raṭl= 450 gr = 144 Dirham.[12]
- qinṭār jarwī= 100 raṭl jarwī = 96.7 kg. A weight measure used in Egypt for measuring oil, sugar, and other types of commodities.[13]
- maṭar — (a measurement unit of liquids) = approximately 16–17 kg.[14]
Monetary Units
- dīnār= Dinar = gold coin, with canonical weight of 4.233 g.[15]
- dirham= Dirham = silver coin, with canonical weight of 3.125 gr. In the Villages of the Fayyum, however, the low quality waraq or black dirham is always intended.[16]
Exchange Rate
The standard exchange rate used uniformly throughout the treatise is 1 dinar = 40 (waraq) dirhams, an exchange rate referred to as the ‘exchange rate of Cairo’.[17]
[1] Walther Hinz, Islamische Masse und Gewichte: Umgerechnet ins Metrische System, Handbuch der Orientalistik, 1 (Leiden: Brill, 1970).
[2] Eliyahu Ashtor, ‘Makāyīl and Mawāzīn’, EI2, vi, 117–21.
[3] According to Hinz, qīrāṭ = 1/32 qadaḥ of wheat (Hinz, Islamische Masse und Gewichte, p. 50), but in Villages of the Fayyum the qīrāṭ appears throughout as equal to 1/24. On qīrāṭ as a 1/24 share in all contexts, see Cuno, The Pasha’s Peasants, p. 210; Warren C. Schulz, ‘The Mechanisms of Commerce’, in The New Cambridge History of Islam: Volume 4, Islamic Cultures and Societies to the End of the Eighteenth Century, ed. by Robert Irwin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 332–54 (p. 347).
[4] On ḥabba and dāniq as fractions, rather than units of weight, see Avram L. Udovitch, ‘Fals’, EI2, ii, 768–69; Cuno, The Pasha’s Peasants, p. 210. For a more literal interpretation, see Hinz, Islamisch Masse und Gewichte, pp. 11, 12.
[5] Hinz, Islamische Masse und Gewichte, p. 39; Ashtor, ‘Makāyīl and Mawāzīn’. According to an anecdote narrated by al-Maqrīzī in the fifteenth century, the ardabb of the Fayyum was 50 per cent larger than that of Cairo; al- Maqrīzī, Kitāb al-mawāʿiẓ, ed. by Sayyid, i, 273. This is not mentioned by al-Nābulusī or corroborated by any other source. Note that the ardabb was conceptually defined as the volume of seed of wheat required to sow a standard plot feddan of wheat, in the same way one Roman artaba was required to sow a Roman aroura.
[6] Hinz, Islamische Masse und Gewichte, p. 52.
[7] Hinz, ‘dhirāʿ’, EI2, ii, 232.
[8] Hinz, Islamische Masse und Gewichte, p. 63.
[9] Hinz, Islamische Masse und Gewichte, p. 63. More precisely, ‘from the bottom of the hand to the tip of the extended thumb’; Cuno, The Pasha’s Peasants, p. 209.
[10] Bosworth, s.v. ‘Miṣāḥa’, EI2. Borsch (The Black Death, p. 48) has recently argued that in the Mamluk era, an Egyptian feddan was equal to roughly 1.4 acres (i.e., 5,665 sq. m.). We stick with the traditional interpretation, which is based on the definition of the feddan as 400 square qaṣaba, as indicated in literary and documentary sources. In an eleventh-century document from the Fayyum, a surface area of 2 feddans is measured to be 50 qaṣaba by 16 qaṣaba, i.e., 800 square qaṣaba; Gaubert and Mouton, Hommes et villages, p. 112 no. 23.
[11] Hinz, Islamische Masse und Gewichte, p. 24.
[12] Hinz, Islamische Masse und Gewichte, p. 29.
[13] Hinz, Islamische Masse und Gewichte, p. 25.
[14] Ashtor, ‘Makāyīl and Mawāzīn’; Reinhart Dozy, Supplément aux dictionnaires arabes, 2 vols (Leiden: Brill, 1881), ii, 600.
[15] Hinz, Islamische Masse und Gewichte, p. 11.
[16] Hinz, Islamische Masse und Gewichte, p. 29. While mostly the text refers to ‘dirhams’, without specifying the type of coin, the text contains a few references to waraq dirhams and to ‘black dirhams’, both terms designating the low quality silver coins in circulation in the Ayyubid period; Warren C. Schultz, ‘The Monetary History of Egypt, 642–1517’, in The Cambridge History of Egypt, i: Islamic Egypt, 640–1517, ed. by Carl F. Petry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 318–38 (p. 332). Since the waraq dirhams mentioned are said to have the same exchange rate to the dinar of 1:40 observed elsewhere in the treatise, it is likely that all references to dirhams in the treatise are to waraq, or black dirhams.
[17] Such an exchange rate also appears in many of the Geniza documents that Goitein analyzed. See Shlomoh D. Goitein, ‘The Exchange Rate of Gold and Silver Money in Fatimid and Ayyubid Times: A Preliminary Study of the Relevant Geniza Material’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 8 (1965), 1–46 (pp. 23, 28, 43).