Parasang

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Statute Miles
and "Persian Farsangs or Parasangs"

The parasang is a historical Iranian unit of walking distance, the length of which varied according to terrain and speed of travel. The European equivalent is the league. In modern terms the distance is about 3 or 3½ miles (4.8 or 5.6 km).

Historical usage

The parasang may have originally been some fraction of the distance an infantryman could march in some predefined period of time.[1] Mid-5th-century BC Herodotus (v.53) speaks of [an army][2] traveling the equivalent of five parasangs per day.

In antiquity, the term was used throughout much of the

fersah, and in Arabic as farsakh (فرسخ). The present-day New Persian word is also farsakh (فرسخ), and should not be confused with the present-day farsang (فرسنگ), which is a metric unit.[n 1]

The earliest surviving mention of the parasang comes from the mid-5th-century BC

stadia, or half a schoenus.[8][1] A length of 30 stadia is also given by several later Greek and Roman writers (10th-century Suidas and Hesychius, 5th/4th-century BC Xenophon Anab. ii.2.6).[8] The 6th-century AD Agathias (ii.21) however—while referring to Herodotus and Xenophon—notes that in his time the contemporary Persians considered the parasang to have only 21 stadia.[8] Strabo (xi.xi.5) also notes that some writers considered it to be 60, others 40, and yet others 30.[8] In his 1st-century Parthian stations, Isidore of Charax "evidently [used for schoenus] the same measure as the Arabic parasang (while in Persia proper 4 sch[onii] equal 3 par[asang])."[9]

The 1st-century

Kai Kobad to be equal to 12,000 cubits.[12]

Following the 30-stadia definition of Herodotus and Xenophon, the parasang would be equal to either 5.7 km (Olympic measure) or 5.3 km (Attic measure).

Hekatompylos based on distances given in mid-4th-century BC chronologies of Alexander's conquests generated empirical estimates of ten stades to the English mile (1.609 km), and three miles to the parasang (4.827 km).[14] "Whatever the basis of calculation, theoretical values for the stade and the parasang must be sought which do not greatly exceed [those] estimates."[1] A 1985 suggestion proposes that the parasang and Attic stade were defined in terms of the Babylonian beru, an astromically-derived sexagesimal unit of time and linear distance. At 1 beru = 60 stadia = 2 parasang, the parasang could then "be expressed as 10,800 'common' [i.e. trade] Babylonian cubits, or 18,000 Attic feet, both figures exactly."[1] A 2010 study of the term parasang in Xenophon's account of Cyrus the Younger's late-5th-century BC campaign against Artaxerxes II demonstrated that the length of Xenophon's parasang varied with weather and the terrain across which the army travelled. The parasangs were longer when the road was flat and dry, but shorter when travel was slower.[15]

The term has survived in

Pesachim 9, the 4th-century Rabbah bar bar Hana, on the authority of the 3rd-century Rabbi Johanan, gives ten parsoth as the distance that a man can walk in a day.[16]
The farsang was also used as an Ethiopian unit for length.[17][18]

The Ginza Rabba, a religious text written in Mandaic, typically measures distances in parasangs.[19]

References

Explanatory notes

  1. statute] miles, but in common parlance varies from three to seven."[7]

Citations

  1. ^ a b c d e Bivar 1985, p. 628.
  2. ^ Murray 1859, pp. 260–261, n.9.
  3. ^ Bivar 1985, p. 629.
  4. ^ Dehkhoda's Dictionary.
  5. ^ Mo'in's Dictionary.
  6. ^ a b c Houtum-Schindler 1888, p. 586.
  7. ^ qtd. in Rood 2010, p. 51.
  8. ^ a b c d e Smith 1870, p. 866.
  9. ^ Henning 1942a, p. 942, n.1.
  10. ^ Henning 1942b, p. 235.
  11. ^ Houtum-Schindler 1888, pp. 585–586.
  12. ^ Houtum-Schindler 1888, pp. 584.
  13. ^ Mason 1920, pp. 480–481.
  14. ^ Hansman 1968, p. 118.
  15. ^ Rood 2010, p. 65f.
  16. ^ B.Pesachim 93b
  17. ^ Washburn 1926, p. 2.
  18. ^ Cardarelli 2003, p. 130.
  19. ISBN 9780958034630
    .

Works cited

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