Mile - Historical Miles in The Arabic World and Europe

Historical Miles in The Arabic World and Europe

  • The Arab mile (or Arabic mile) was a unit of length used by medieval Muslim geographers. Its precise length is uncertain, but is believed to be around 1925 metres.
  • The Danish mil (traditional) was 24,000 Danish feet or 7532.5 metres. Sometimes it was interpreted as exactly 7.5 kilometres. It is the same as the north German Meile (below).
  • The Meile was a traditional unit in German-speaking countries. It was 24,000 German feet; the SI equivalent was 7586 metres in Austria or 7532.5 metres in northern Germany. There was a version known as the geographische Meile, which was 4 Admiralty nautical miles, 7,412.7 metres, or 1/15 of a degree of latitude.
  • The Hungarian mile (magyar) mérföld was the traditional unit in Hungary, equal to 8353.6 m (old times sometimes varied between 8937.4 m and 8379.0 m)
  • In Norway and Sweden, a mil is a unit of length equal to 10 kilometres and commonly used in everyday language. However in more formal situations, such as on road signs and when there is risk of confusion with English miles, kilometres are used instead. The traditional Swedish mil spanned the range from 6000–14,485 metres, depending on province. It was however standardized in 1649 to 36,000 Swedish feet, or 10.687 km. The Norwegian mil was 11.298 kilometres. When the metric system was introduced in the Norwegian-Swedish union in 1889, it standardized the mil to exactly 10 kilometres. Mil is still commonly used when measuring fuel consumption in vehicles; e.g., 0.5 litre per mil.
  • The Portuguese milha was a unit of length used in Portugal and Brazil, before the adoption of the metric system. It was equal to 2087.3 metres.
  • The Russian mile (russkaya milya (русская миля)) was a traditional Russian unit of distance, equal to 7 verst, or 7.468 km.
  • The hrvatska milja (Croatian mile) is 11,130 metres = 11.13 km: the length of an arc of the equator subtended by 1/10 of a degree, first used by Jesuit Stjepan Glavač on a map from 1673.
  • The banska milja (also called hrvatska milja) (mile of Croatian Ban, Croatian mile) was 7586 metres = 7.586 kilometres, or 24,000 feet (the same as the Austrian mile).

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