The stremma ( stremmata; el, στρέμμα, ''strémma'') is a Greek unit of land

area Area is the quantity that expresses the extent of a region on the plane or on a curved surface. The area of a plane region or ''plane area'' refers to the area of a shape or planar lamina, while '' surface area'' refers to the area of an op ...

equal to 1,000

square metre The square metre ( international spelling as used by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures) or square meter (American spelling) is the unit of area in the International System of Units (SI) with symbol m2. It is the area of a square ...

s. Historically, stremmata were not standardized, and may have been anywhere from .

History

The

ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic pe ...

equivalent was the

square plethron Plethron ( grc-gre, , plural ''plethra'') is an ancient unit of Greek measurement equal to 97 to 100 Greek feet (ποῦς, ''pous''; c. 30 meters), although the measures for plethra may have varied from polis to polis. This was roughly the wid ...

, which served as the Greeks' form of the

acre The acre is a unit of land area used in the imperial and US customary systems. It is traditionally defined as the area of one chain by one furlong (66 by 660 feet), which is exactly equal to 10 square chains, of a square mile, 4,840 square ...

. It was originally defined as the distance plowed by a team of oxen in a day but was nominally standardized as the area enclosed by a square 100 Greek feet (''

pous The pous ( podes; grc-gre, ποῦς, ''poûs'') or Greek foot ( feet) was a Greek unit of length. It had various subdivisions whose lengths varied by place and over time. 100 podes made up one plethron, 600 podes made up a stade (the ...

'') to a side. It was the size of a Greek wrestling square. The

Byzantine The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...

Morea The Morea ( el, Μορέας or ) was the name of the Peloponnese peninsula in southern Greece during the Middle Ages and the early modern period. The name was used for the Byzantine province known as the Despotate of the Morea, by the Ottom ...

n stremma continued to vary depending on the period and the quality of the land, but usually enclosed an area between . It was originally also known as the "plethron" but this was eventually replaced by "stremma", derived from the verb for "turning" the ground with a Byzantine plow. The Ottoman stremma, often called the Turkish stremma, is the Greek (and occasionally English) name for the

dunam A dunam ( Ottoman Turkish, Arabic: ; tr, dönüm; he, דונם), also known as a donum or dunum and as the old, Turkish, or Ottoman stremma, was the Ottoman unit of area equivalent to the Greek stremma or English acre, representing the amou ...

, which in turn is probably derived from the Byzantine unit. Again, this varied by region: some values include , and 1,600 m². Costas Lapavitsas,

Conversions

One modern stremma is equivalent to:

Metric

*1,000

s *0.1

hectare The hectare (; SI symbol: ha) is a non-SI metric unit of area equal to a square with 100- metre sides (1 hm2), or 10,000 m2, and is primarily used in the measurement of land. There are 100 hectares in one square kilometre. An acre i ...

s *0.001

square kilometre Square kilometre ( International spelling as used by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures) or square kilometer (American spelling), symbol km2, is a multiple of the square metre, the SI unit of area or surface area. 1 km2 is equ ...

Imperial

*10,763.9

square feet The square foot (plural square feet; abbreviated sq. ft, sf, or ft2; also denoted by '2) is an imperial unit and U.S. customary unit (non- SI, non-metric) of area, used mainly in the United States and partially in Canada, the United Kingdom, Bang ...

*0.247 105 38

s *0.000 386 102

square mile The square mile (abbreviated as sq mi and sometimes as mi2)Rowlett, Russ (September 1, 2004) University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Retrieved February 22, 2012. is an imperial and US unit of measure for area. One square mile is an ar ...

Bibliography

{{reflist Units of area Human-based units of measurement Metricated units

History

Conversions

Metric

Imperial

See also

Bibliography