The feddan, Egyptian unit of area
The feddan is exactly 4200 square meters, that is 24 qirat of 175 square meters each. It is the unit in which Egypt counts its farmland.
Egypt is one of the few countries where a pre-metric unit remains the working unit of a whole sector: agricultural statistics, leases and title deeds are all counted in feddan, and Sudan uses it too. The trap is its likeness to the acre: one feddan is 1.038 acre, almost four per cent more, a gap small enough to slip past in a contract and large enough to matter across a whole holding.
The feddan in other units
| 1 feddan | 0.0042 km² |
| 1 feddan | 0.42 ha |
| 1 feddan | 42 a |
| 1 feddan | 4,200 m² |
| 1 feddan | 42,000,000 cm² |
| 1 feddan | 0.00162163 mi² |
| 1 feddan | 1.03784 ac |
| 1 feddan | 45,208 ft² |
| 1 feddan | 6,510,013 in² |
| 1 feddan | 5,023 yd² |
| 1 feddan | 4,200,000,000 mm² |
| 1 feddan | 4.2 dunum |
| 1 feddan | 1,271 tsubo |
| 1 feddan | 2.625 rai |
| 1 feddan | 1,271 pyeong |
| 1 feddan | 24 qirat |
| 1 feddan | 41.5137 guntha |
| 1 feddan | 103.784 cent |
| 1 feddan | 8.30274 kanal |
Frequently asked questions
How many feddan make a hectare?
2.381 feddan, and 238.1 feddan to the square kilometer. The other way round a feddan is 0.42 hectare, close enough to a half that a yield table can read double or nothing when the unit is left off.
What does confusing the feddan with the acre cost?
153 square meters per feddan. On a hundred-feddan estate that comes to 103.8 acres, 1.53 hectare more than a contract written in acres implies, and a whole plot changes hands without being named.
What does a feddan look like on the ground?
A square 64.8 meters on a side. A football pitch of 105 by 68 meters covers 1.7 of them, and a smallholding in the Delta is counted in single feddan rather than tens.