The Arab mile (Arabic: الميل) ultimately derived from the Latin word millia meaning "thousand" is a historical unit of length. Its precise length is disputed, lying between 1.8 and 2.0 km. It was used by medieval Arab geographers and astronomers. The predecessor of the modern nautical mile, it extended the Roman mile mille passuum (literally "a thousand paces") to fit an astronomical approximation of 1 minute of an arc of latitude measured along a north-south meridian. The distance between two pillars whose latitudes differed by 1 degree in a north-south direction was measured using sighting pegs along a flat desert plane.
There were 4000 cubits in an Arab mile. If al-Farghani used the legal cubit as his unit of measurement, then an Arab mile was 1995 meters long. If he used al-Ma'mun's surveying cubit, it was 1925 meters long or 1.04 modern nautical miles.
Read more about Arab Mile: Al-Ma'mun's Mesurement
Famous quotes containing the words arab and/or mile:
“I saw the Arab map.
It resembled a mare shuffling on,
dragging its history like saddlebags,
nearing its tomb and the pitch of hell.”
—Adonis [Ali Ahmed Said] (b. 1930)
“There was a crooked man, and he went a crooked mile,
He found a crooked sixpence against a crooked stile:
He bought a crooked cat which caught a crooked mouse,
And they all lived together in a little crooked house.”
—Mother Goose (fl. 17th–18th century. There was a crooked man, and he went a crooked mile (l. 1–4)