This qasáb can be divided into 6 Hashími cubits, or 12 feet, or 24 kubdehs (handshafts), or sexdecimally into 2 fathoms, 4 guz, 8 cubits, 16 spans. It is a mere coincidence that the old French foot, = 12·789 inches, was very approximately half a Hashími cubit.
The date of this measure is as uncertain as its source. It is a Turkish measure = 27·9 inches or thereabouts, divided into 16 qirát. This division points to it being 2/3 of a Persian guz of 24 qirát.
Among the guz of Persia there is one = 1-2/3 Hashími cubits = 42 inches, of which 16/24 = 28 inches. If this length were taken, it might have been somewhat lessened to make it an aliquot part of the Turkish reed or qasáb, 6 Hashími cubits = 153·36 inches. At the length of 27·9 inches, 5-1/2 arshīn = 153·45 inches or within 1/10 inch of the qasáb.
It is curious that the Reed should be 5-1/2 arshīns, as our Rod is 5-1/2 yards.
7 Beládi cubits, 6 Hashími cubits = 5-1/2 arshīns, the Egyptian qasáb, somewhat less, is—
6 Assyrian cubits of 25·26 inches = 151·56 inches, or 5-1/2 double royal feet of 13·76 = 151·36 inches, and is divided into 10 ‘belendi’ feet of 15·156 inches.
There is a lesser Egyptian qasáb of 5 arshīns = 139·65 inches and a third still less, of 4 Assyrian cubits = 101 inches. With each of these qasáb 20 × 20 make a Feddan of land.
The word Pík is the Greek pichūs, a cubit.
In this and the next two chapters I have necessarily had to work largely on materials gathered by others. The equivalents of foreign measures and weights are in many cases taken from—
Woolhouse’s ‘Measures, Weights and Moneys of all Nations,’ 1890.
The information in the last of these is excellently compiled and very trustworthy.
My object is to give, not tabulated series of measures but their history and rationale, to apprehend the ways of thought which have given rise to them, to seek their relations. No country has an isolated system, or even an isolated measure, and unity underlies the infinite variety of measures and weights.
TABLE OF SOME EUROPEAN ITINERARY MEASURES
Yards Miles 1. Meridian mile—Naples 2026-2/3 1·1515 „ league, 1/20 degree — 4·54
3. Roman mile, modified— Venice, 1000 paces of 5 feet 1901 1·08 Sicily, 720 rods of 8 palmi 1625 0·924 Spain, 1000 paces of 5 feet 1520 0·863 Portugal, 8 stadia of 234-2/3 varas 2281 1·296 England, 8 furlongs of 220 yards 1760 1·0 France, 1000 toises 2131 1·21