The qirat, Egyptian unit of area
The qirat is exactly 175 square meters, one twenty-fourth of the Egyptian feddan. It is the unit an Egyptian title deed reaches for as soon as a plot is smaller than a field.
Egyptian land is counted in base 24, twice over: a feddan holds 24 qirat, and a qirat holds 24 sahm of 7.29 square meters, so a deed carries three numbers that step down like hours and minutes, except that each step divides by 24 rather than 60. The twenty-fourth is an old habit: the Roman solidus was cut into 24 siliquae, the keration of the Greeks, the carob seed whose name reached Arabic as qirat and Europe as carat. It outlived the coin in two places at once, in the karat that grades gold out of 24 and in the qirat that cuts up the feddan.
The qirat in other units
| 1 qirat | 0.000175 km² |
| 1 qirat | 0.0175 ha |
| 1 qirat | 1.75 a |
| 1 qirat | 175 m² |
| 1 qirat | 1,750,000 cm² |
| 1 qirat | 0.0000675679 mi² |
| 1 qirat | 0.0432434 ac |
| 1 qirat | 1,884 ft² |
| 1 qirat | 271,251 in² |
| 1 qirat | 209.298 yd² |
| 1 qirat | 175,000,000 mm² |
| 1 qirat | 0.175 dunum |
| 1 qirat | 52.9375 tsubo |
| 1 qirat | 0.0416667 feddan |
| 1 qirat | 0.109375 rai |
| 1 qirat | 52.9375 pyeong |
| 1 qirat | 1.72974 guntha |
| 1 qirat | 4.32434 cent |
| 1 qirat | 0.345948 kanal |
Frequently asked questions
How many square meters is a qirat?
175, exactly, which is a square 13.23 meters on a side. A hectare holds 57.14 of them and a feddan holds 24. An acre holds only 23.13, and that missing 0.87 qirat, 153 square meters, is the whole difference between an acre and a feddan.
What comes below the qirat?
The sahm, one twenty-fourth of a qirat, 7.29 square meters, so 576 sahm to the feddan. Egyptian deeds and farm returns carry all three: a plot written 2 feddan 12 qirat 8 sahm covers 10,558 square meters, since 12 qirat is exactly half a feddan.
Is the qirat of land the carat of a diamond?
No. One is an area of 175 square meters, the other a mass of 200 milligrams, and only the word is shared. Both descend from the carob seed the Greeks called keration, used to weigh small coin: 24 of them made a Roman solidus. That twenty-fourth is why gold is graded out of 24 and why the feddan splits into 24 qirat.