ratl
Sign in to saveA ratl (رطل ) is a medieval Middle Eastern unit of measurement found in several historic recipes. The term was used to measure both liquid and weight (around a pound and a pint in 10th century Baghdad, but anywhere from 8 ounces to 8 pounds depending on the time period and region).
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- unit of mass
- Part of
- saa
- Said to be same as
- pound
Show 1 more fact
- measured physical quantity
- mass
via Wikidata · CC0
~2 min read
Encyclopedic overview
2 sectionsContents
- measurement
- References
A ratl (رطل ) is a medieval Middle Eastern unit of measurement found in several historic recipes. The term was used to measure both liquid and weight (around a pound and a pint in 10th century Baghdad, but anywhere from 8 ounces to 8 pounds depending on the time period and region).
While there were a variety of names for different shapes of cups and mugs in use at the time, the ratl seems to have had a position roughly equivalent to a British pint in that the name of the drinking-vessel also implied a standardized measurement as opposed to merely the object's shape, in both 10th century Baghdad and 13th century Andalusia. However, those standardized measures varied both by region and by purpose: the spice-measuring ratl, the flax-measuring ratl, the oil-measuring ratl, and the quicksilver-measuring ratl all differed from each other.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “ratl” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.