Stremma

The stremma (pl. stremmata; Greek: στρέμμα, strémma) is a Greek unit of land area that is now equal to precisely 1,000 square metres. Its area can be visualized as equal to the area enclosed by a square having side length of 31.62 metres, or 103.7 imperial feet.

History

The ancient Greek equivalent was the square plethron, which served as the Greeks' form of the acre. It was originally defined as the distance plowed by a team of oxen in a day[1] but nominally standardized as the area enclosed by a square 100 Greek feet (pous) to a side. This area was also used as the size of a Greek wrestling square.

The Byzantine or Morean stremma continued to vary depending on the period and the quality of the land, but usually enclosed an area between 900–1,900 m2 (9,700–20,500 sq ft).[2] It was originally also known as the "plethron" but this was eventually replaced by "stremma", derived from the verb for "turning" the ground with the simple Byzantine plow.[3]

The old Turkish or Ottoman stremma is the Greek (and occasionally English) name for the "dunam", which probably derived from the Byzantine unit.[4] Again, this varied by region: The Dictionary of Modern Greek gives a value of 1,270 m2 (13,700 sq ft),[5] but Costas Lapavitsas used the value of 1,600 m2 for the region of Naoussa in the early 20th century.[6]

Conversions

One modern stremma is equivalent to:

Metric
Imperial

See also

Bibliography
  1. Pryce, Frederick Norman; et al. (2012), "measures", The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 4th ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 917, ISBN 978-0-19-954556-8.
  2. Siriol Davis, "Pylos Regional Archaeological Project, Part VI: administration and settlement in Venetian Navarino", Hesperia, Winter, 2004
  3. Λεξικό της κοινής Νεοελληνικής (Dictionary of Modern Greek), Ινστιτούτο Νεοελληνικών Σπουδών, Θεσσαλονίκη, 1998. ISBN 960-231-085-5
  4. V.L. Ménage, Review of Speros Vryonis, Jr. The decline of medieval Hellenism in Asia Minor and the process of islamization from the eleventh through the fifteenth century, Berkeley, 1971; in Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies (University of London) 36:3 (1973), pp. 659-661. at JSTOR (subscription required); see also Erich Schilbach, Byzantinische Metrologie.
  5. Λεξικό, 1998
  6. Costas Lapavitsas, "Social and Economic Underpinning of Industrial Development: Evidence from Ottoman Macedonia" (PDF). Ηλεκτρονικό Δελτίο Οικονομικής Ιστορίας. Retrieved 2012-08-29.
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