The kanal, unit of area of the Punjab
The kanal is 20 marla, 605 square yards, 505.857 square meters, exactly one eighth of an acre. Revenue records in Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir still print it.
The whole ladder comes out of one stick. British settlement officers surveyed the Punjab with the karam, a rod of five and a half feet: a marla is nine square karam, 272.25 square feet; twenty marla make a kanal; eight kanal make an acre. Nothing in it is arbitrary once the rod is known, and nothing in it is metric. India's metrication of 1958 made the square meter the only unit that binds in a deed, and nearly seventy years later the jamabandi still reads in kanal and marla, with the square meters written beside them.
The kanal in other units
| 1 kanal | 0.000505857 km² |
| 1 kanal | 0.0505857 ha |
| 1 kanal | 5.05857 a |
| 1 kanal | 505.857 m² |
| 1 kanal | 5,058,571 cm² |
| 1 kanal | 0.000195313 mi² |
| 1 kanal | 0.125 ac |
| 1 kanal | 5,445 ft² |
| 1 kanal | 784,080 in² |
| 1 kanal | 605 yd² |
| 1 kanal | 505,857,053 mm² |
| 1 kanal | 0.505857 dunum |
| 1 kanal | 153.022 tsubo |
| 1 kanal | 0.120442 feddan |
| 1 kanal | 0.316161 rai |
| 1 kanal | 153.022 pyeong |
| 1 kanal | 2.89061 qirat |
| 1 kanal | 5 guntha |
| 1 kanal | 12.5 cent |
Frequently asked questions
Is the Pakistani kanal the same as the Indian one?
No. Pakistani Punjab rounded the marla to 25 square yards after 1947, which gives a kanal of 500 square yards, 418.06 square meters, a sixth less than the 605 square yards of the Indian kanal. Every housing scheme in Lahore and Islamabad counts in that marla.
How many kanal make an acre, and how many a hectare?
Eight to the acre exactly, and 19.77 to the hectare. One kanal is 0.0506 hectare, that is 505.857 square meters, and it is the largest unit of the marla-kanal-acre ladder still printed in the jamabandi.
Why do Punjab listings talk about ten marla?
Because the half kanal, 252.93 square meters, is the standard residential plot of the public housing schemes. Five marla is the budget version, a full kanal the wide one, and the price is quoted per marla rather than per square meter.