Dunam
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A dunam (Ottoman Turkish, Arabic: دونم; Turkish: dönüm; Hebrew: דונם; Yiddish: דונאם), also known as a donum or dunum, is a unit of measurement of area. Its origin, also known as the old dunam, Turkish dunam, or Ottoman stremma,[1] was the Ottoman unit that roughly represented the amount of agricultural land that could be plowed by a team of oxen in a day. It is analogous in role (but not equivalent) to the stremma in Byzantine Greek units or the acre in the English system. The legal definition was "forty standard paces in length and breadth",[2] but its actual area varied considerably from place to place, from a little more than 900 m2 (0.22 acres) in Ottoman Palestine to around 2,500 m2 (0.62 acres) in Ottoman Iraq.[3][4]
The unit is still in use in many areas previously ruled by the Ottomans. The modern definition is standardized, and the current dunam (or new dunam, metric dunam) is defined as exactly 1,000 square meters (0.10 ha; 0.25 acres).[4]
Ottoman origins
[edit]The name dönüm is from the Ottoman Turkish dönmek (دونمك 'to turn'), and literally means "to turn". Victor Louis Ménage has suggested this was probably a calque (literal translation) of the Byzantine Greek stremma, which also literally means "a turning" and has a similar size. This word likely migrated during the early period of Ottoman rule of Mysia-Bithynia when there would have been many Byzantine Greek-speaking citizens and Turkish-speaking administrators.[2]
The Dictionary of Modern Greek defines the old "Ottoman stremma" as approximately 1,270 square meters (13,700 sq ft).[4]
Definitions
[edit]Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro
[edit]Various Balkan countries use the dunam, although they all use the metric dunam now of 1000 square meters. In Bosnia and Herzegovina and in Serbia the unit is called the dulum (дулум) or dunum (дунум). In Bosnia and Herzegovina it is known as a dunum (or dulum). In Albania it is called a dynym or dylym.[5]
An exception is the region of Leskovac in south Serbia, where one dulum is equal to 1,600 square metres (17,222 sq ft).[citation needed]
Cyprus
[edit]In Cyprus, a donum is 14,400 square foot (1,338 m2).[6] In the Republic of Cyprus, Greek-Cypriots traditionally used the local Greek Cypriot dialect word σκάλες [skales], rather than the mainland Greek word stremma. Since 1986, Cyprus officially uses the square metre and the hectare.
A Cypriot donum consists of 4 evleks, each of which consists of 3,600 square foot (334 m2).
Greece
[edit]In Greece, the old dönüm is called a "Turkish stremma", while today, a stremma (στρέμμα) or "royal stremma" is exactly one decare, like the metric dönüm.[4]
Costas Lapavitsas suggests a value of 1,600 square metres (17,000 sq ft) for the dunam in the region of Naoussa in the early 20th century.[7]
Israel, Palestine, Syria, and Turkey
[edit]In Israel, Palestine, Syria, Iraq, and Turkey, the dunam is now standardized on 1,000 square metres (10,764 ft2), which is 1 decare. From the Ottoman period and through the early years of the British Mandate for Palestine, the size of a dunam was 919.3 square metres (9,895 sq ft), but in 1928, the metric dunam of 1,000 square metres (0.10 ha) was adopted. The metric dunam is still used today in Israel and Palestine.[8][9]
United Arab Emirates
[edit]The Dubai Statistics Center and Statistics Centre Abu Dhabi use the metric dunam (spelt as donum) for data relating to agricultural land use.[10] One donum equals 1,000 square metres (10,764 sq ft).
Similar units
[edit]The Byzantine Greek stremma was the probable source of the Turkish unit.[2] The zeugarion (ζευγάριον; Turkish çift, چفت) was a similar unit derived from the area plowed by a team of oxen in a day. The English unit acre is a measure of area for a similar size of land, although it developed separately.[citation needed] In Bulgaria, the decare (декар) is used, which is an SI unit, literally meaning 10 ares.[relevant?]
See also
[edit]- Orders of magnitude (area), for other units of area
- Conversion of units
- Feddan (فدّان), a similar non-SI unit of area used in Egypt, Sudan, and Syria
- Resm-i dönüm, a land tax based on the area of a farm
References
[edit]- ↑ "Dunam". www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org. Retrieved 31 March 2025.
- 1 2 3 Ménage, Victor Louis (1973). "Review of The Decline of Medieval Hellenism in Asia Minor and the Process of Islamization from the Eleventh through the Fifteenth Century, by Speros Vryonis, Jr". Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies. 36 (3): 659–661. JSTOR 613605.
- ↑ Wehr, Hans (1994). Cowan, J. Milton (ed.). Arabic-English Dictionary: The Hans Wehr Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic (4th ed.). Spoken Language Services. p. 351.
- 1 2 3 4 Λεξικό της κοινής Νεοελληνικής [Dictionary of Modern Greek] (in Greek). Θεσσαλονίκη: Ινστιτούτο Νεοελληνικών Σπουδών. 1998. ISBN 960-231-085-5.
- ↑ Мерне јединице у КЗ и КН (in Serbian). Republic Geodetic Authority of the Republic of Serbia. Archived from the original on 4 March 2012. Retrieved 6 September 2010.
- ↑ Department of Lands and Surveys web site http://www.moi.gov.cy/moi/dls[permanent dead link] (retrieved April 2014)
- ↑ Lapavitsas, Costas. "Social and Economic Underpinning of Industrial Development: Evidence from Ottoman Macedonia" (PDF). Ηλεκτρονικό Δελτίο Οικονομικής Ιστορίας. Archived from the original (PDF) on 28 September 2007. Retrieved 26 August 2012.
- ↑ El-Eini, Roza I.M. (2006). "Currency and Measures". Mandated landscape: British imperial rule in Palestine, 1929–1948. Routledge. p. xxiii. ISBN 978-0-7146-5426-3. Retrieved 5 May 2009.
- ↑ Israel Central Bureau of Statistics. "explanatory notes" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 17 December 2013. Retrieved 2 August 2013.
- ↑ "Chapter 8: Agriculture Statistical Yearbook" (PDF). Dubai Statistics Center. 2009. p. 184. Retrieved 17 April 2019.