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Revision as of 15:10, 31 July 2006 by The Rambling Man (talk | contribs) (Unit dab)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)A dunam or dönüm, dunum, donum is a unit of area.
Originally, a dönüm, from the Ottoman Turkish ضنمق / dönmek (to turn), was the amount of land one man could till in one day. It was not precisely defined and varied considerably from place to place. It is still used, in various standardized versions, in many countries formerly part of the Ottoman empire.
Versions include:
- Northern Cyprus, the donum is 14,400 ft² (1,337.8 m²).
- In Iraq it is 2,500 m².
- In Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, the Palestinian Authority, and Turkey it is 1,000 m². Before the end of the Ottoman Empire, the size of a dönüm was 919.3 square meters, but during the British Mandate of Palestine the metric dunam of 1,000 m² was adopted, and this is still used.
- Other countries using a dunam of some size include Libya, Syria and the countries of the former Yugoslavia.
- The Greek stremma has approximately the same size, and the word has the same meaning ('turning').
The dunam is not an SI unit. The SI unit of area is the square metre (m²).
Conversions
A metric dunam is equal to:
- 1 000 square metres (exactly)
- 0.1 hectares (exactly)
- 1 decare (exactly)
- 10 ares (exactly)
- 0.247 105 381 acres (approx)
- 1 195.990 05 square yards (approx)
- 10 763.910 4 square feet (approx)
External links
- Foreign Weights and Measures Formerly in Common Use
- Dictionary of units
- Variable donums in Turkey
- Summary based on UN handbook