Dictionary

feddan en · NOUN

Etymology

Borrowing from Arabic فَدَّان (faddān).

Meanings

1. A Middle Eastern unit of area, divided into 24 kirats, and typically equivalent to 4200.8 square metres.
   • The first involved a general limitation of ownership to 200 feddans per individual, with another 100 feddans which could be transferred to the owner's own immediate family, the excess to be expropriated and redistributed to peasant cultivators in small plots of up to five feddans. 1986, Alan Richards, Food, states, and peasants: analyses of the agrarian question in the Middle East:
   • […] which means that sowing at the usual rate of about two and one half kelehs of seed per feddan, we may sow at the same time from 4,000 to 5,000 living pink bollworms in the infested seeds; […] 1916, F. C. Willcocks, The Insect and Related Pests of Egypt (volume 1, page 176)

Forms