Dunam

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A dunam or dönüm, dunum, donum is a unit of area used in the Ottoman Empire and still used, in various standardized versions, in many countries formerly part of the Ottoman Empire. It was defined as "forty standard paces in length and breadth",<ref>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)</ref> but varied considerably from place to place.

The name dönüm, from the Ottoman Turkish ضنمق / dönmek (to turn) appears to be a calque of the Byzantine stremma and had the same size. It was likely adopted by the Ottomans from the Byzantines in Mysia-Bithynia.<ref>Ménage, op.cit.</ref>

Versions include:

Northern Cyprus, the donum is 14,400 ft² (1,337.8 m²).
In Iraq it is 2,500 m².
In Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, the Palestinian Authority, and Turkey it is 1,000 m². Before the end of the Ottoman Empire, the size of a dönüm was 919.3 square meters, but during the British Mandate of Palestine the metric dunam of 1,000 m² was adopted, and this is still used.
Other countries using a dunam of some size include Libya, Syria and the countries of the former Yugoslavia.
The Greek stremma has approximately the same size, and the word has the same meaning ('turning').