Batman (unit)

The batman (Turkish pronunciation: [batˈman]) was a unit of mass used in the Ottoman Empire and among Turkic peoples of the Russian Empire. It has also been recorded as a unit of area in Uyghur-speaking regions of Central Asia. The name is Turkic (Ottoman Turkish baṭmān; Chagatai bātmān), but was also sometimes used for the equivalent unit in Persia ( من, man). The equivalent unit in British India was anglicized as the maund. The value of the batman (or maund) varied considerably from place to place.

The man as a unit of weight is thought to be of at least Chaldean origin, with Sir Henry Yule attributing Akkadian origins to the word. The Hebrew maneh (מנה) and the Ancient Greek mina (μνᾶ) are thought to be cognate. It was originally equal to one-ninth of the weight of an artaba of water, or approximately four kilograms in modern units. İnalcık believes the ancient Persian patimāna may have come from the late Assyrian word for "mana of the king". The man or batman spread throughout Arabia and Persia: it was adopted by the Ottoman Empire, and brought to India by the Mughal Empire. The first attestation which gives a comparison to European weights was by Pegolotti in his Pratica della mercatura, written about 1340. He reported the batman as the main unit of mass in Ayasluğ ("Altoluogo di Turchia" to Pegolotti; modern Selçuk, in western Turkey), equivalent to 32 Genoese pounds (libbre).

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