Feddan, Dunam, Acre or Hectare? Land Units in the Arab World

The short answer

Unit	Square meters	Where it’s used
Feddan	about 4,200.83	Egypt, Sudan
Qirat (1/24 feddan)	about 175	Egypt
Dunam (metric)	1,000	Jordan, Palestine, Turkey
Iraqi dunam	2,500	Iraq
Hectare	10,000	Metric countries, official statistics
Acre	about 4,046.86	United States, United Kingdom

The feddan and the qirat

The feddan is the traditional unit for farmland in Egypt and Sudan. Its size was fixed in 1891 as 333⅓ square qasaba, with a qasaba of 3.55 meters. That comes to about 4,200.83 square meters, which many people round to 4,200.

A feddan is divided into 24 qirats of about 175 square meters, and each qirat into 24 sahms of about 7.3 square meters. So a plot of 6 qirats is a quarter of a feddan, about 1,050 square meters.

A feddan is a little larger than an acre: 1 feddan is about 1.04 acres. The word “qirat” is also used for the carat that weighs gold and gems, but that’s a different unit.

Convert it: feddans to square meters, square meters to feddans, feddans to acres and acres to feddans.

The dunam

The dunam (also written dunum or donum) dates from Ottoman times. Today’s metric dunam is exactly 1,000 square meters and is used for land in Jordan, Palestine, Israel and Turkey, where it’s called the dönüm. Iraq uses a larger dunam of 2,500 square meters, so check which one a document means.

A metric dunam is about a quarter of an acre (0.247 acres), and 10 dunams make a hectare.

Convert it: dunams to acres and acres to dunams.

Hectares, acres and square meters

• A hectare is 10,000 square meters, a square 100 meters on each side. Governments and farm statistics use it almost everywhere.
• An acre is 43,560 square feet, about 4,046.86 square meters. You’ll see it in American and British listings.
• In the Gulf states, plots and homes are usually measured in square meters, and property listings in the UAE often use square feet.

Quick conversion table

1 of this…	Square meters	Feddans	Dunams	Hectares	Acres
Feddan	4,200.83	1	4.2	0.42	1.038
Dunam	1,000	0.238	1	0.1	0.247
Hectare	10,000	2.38	10	1	2.471
Acre	4,046.86	0.963	4.047	0.405	1

For other amounts, use the area converter. It also handles square feet, square yards and square kilometers.

Tips for buying or selling land

• Write both the unit and the size in square meters in any contract, for example “2 feddans (8,401.67 m²)”.
• If the land is in Iraq, or the document is old, ask which dunam is meant.
• Land registries may round differently. The registry’s figure is the one that counts.