Ancient Persian units

An official system of weights and measures was established in the ancient
Persian Empire

Achaemenid Empire

The Achaemenid Empire , sometimes known as First Persian Empire and/or Persian Empire, was founded in the 6th century BCE by Cyrus the Great who overthrew the Median confederation...

 under the Achaemenid dynasty (550-350 BCE).

Length

Persian unit	Persian name	Relation to previous unit	Metric Metric system The metric system is an international decimalised system of measurement. France was first to adopt a metric system, in 1799, and a metric system is now the official system of measurement, used in almost every country in the world...  Value	Imperial Value
finger	aiwas		20 mm	0.79"In Inch An inch is the name of a unit of length in a number of different systems, including Imperial units, and United States customary units. There are 36 inches in a yard and 12 inches in a foot...
hand	dva	5 aiwas	100 mm	3.94"In
foot	trayas	3 dva	300 mm	11.81"In
four-hands	remen	4 dva	400 mm	15.75"In (1.31'FT)
cubit (five-hands)	pank'a dva	5 dva	500 mm	19.69"In (1.64'FT)
great cubit (six-hands)	(k)swacsh dva	6 dva	600 mm	23.62"In (1.97'FT)
pace	pank'a	5 trayas	1.5 m	4.92'FT
ten-foot	daca trayas	pank'a	3 m	9.84'FT (3.28YD)
hundred-foot	chebel	8 daca trayas	24 m	78.74'FT (26.25YD)
league, the distance a horse Horse The horse is one of two extant subspecies of Equus ferus, or the wild horse. It is a single-hooved mammal belonging to the taxonomic family Equidae. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million years from a small multi-toed creature into the large, single-toed animal of today...  could walk in one hour.	parasang Parasang The parasang is a historical Iranian unit of itinerant distance comparable to the European league.In antiquity, the term was used throughout much of the Middle East, and the Old Iranian language from which it derives can no longer be determined...	250 chebel	6 km	6561.68YD (3.73MI Mile A mile is a unit of length, most commonly 5,280 feet . The mile of 5,280 feet is sometimes called the statute mile or land mile to distinguish it from the nautical mile... )
mansion, one day's march on the Royal Road Royal Road The Persian Royal Road was an ancient highway reorganized and rebuilt by the Persian king Darius the Great of the Achaemenid Empire in the 5th century BC. Darius built the road to facilitate rapid communication throughout his very large empire from Susa to Sardis... .	(Greek Ancient Greece Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...  stathmos)	4 or 5 parasang Parasang The parasang is a historical Iranian unit of itinerant distance comparable to the European league.In antiquity, the term was used throughout much of the Middle East, and the Old Iranian language from which it derives can no longer be determined...	24-30 km	14Mi-18Mi

Volume

The shekel and mina ("profane" or "sacred") were units of both weight and volume. A shekel or mina weight was equal to the weight of that volume of water. Note that the values given for the mina do not match the definitions.

1 shekel = 8.3 ml (approximately 1 cubic aiwas).

1 profane mina = 50 shekel = 500 ml (approximately 27 cubic aiwas).

1 sacred mina = 60 shekel = 600 ml (approximately 1 cubic dva).

1 talent (volume) = 60 profane mina = 25 liters (approximately 1 cubic trayas).

Weight

The talent was a measure of weight used for large amounts of coinage (bullion, bulk coin), rather than an individual coin. Seven Babylonia

Babylonia

Babylonia was an ancient cultural region in central-southern Mesopotamia , with Babylon as its capital. Babylonia emerged as a major power when Hammurabi Babylonia was an ancient cultural region in central-southern Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq), with Babylon as its capital. Babylonia emerged as...

n talents equalled ten Attic talents, according to a list of the revenues of Cyrus the Great (Cyrus II of Persia)

Cyrus the Great

Cyrus II of Persia , commonly known as Cyrus the Great, also known as Cyrus the Elder, was the founder of the Achaemenid Empire. Under his rule, the empire embraced all the previous civilized states of the ancient Near East, expanded vastly and eventually conquered most of Southwest Asia and much...

 recorded in Herodotus

Herodotus

Herodotus was an ancient Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus, Caria and lived in the 5th century BC . He has been called the "Father of History", and was the first historian known to collect his materials systematically, test their accuracy to a certain extent and arrange them in a...

.

Units used in modern Persia (Iran)

Some related units were used in Persia in the 19th century, and are still used in contemporary Iran

Iran

Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...

.

Length

1 arsani or ulna = 52-64 cm.

1 chebel = 40 arsani = 21-25 meters

1 farsang (parasang) = 6.23 km in 19th century Persia.

1 farsang = 10 km in modern Iran and Turkey

Turkey

Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...

.