A guz or the Mughal yard is a unit of length used in parts of Asia. Historically, it was a regionally variable measurement similar to the English yard both in size and in that it was often used for measuring textiles. Values of the guz ranged from over time. Today, it is generally used in the Indian subcontinent as the word for a yard. A present day sari is still measured as 7 guz while a traditional one can be as long as 9 guz.

History

Use of the guz in India was first established during the Mughal Empire. The guz in Rajasthan at the end of the 17th century was quoted as being . By 1875, the average value of the guz in Bengal was , but was in

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and in Bombay. By the 20th century, the guz was uniformly quoted as being equal in length to one yard in the English system, or 0.91 metres in the metric system. But there are some different values still in use, like Bikaner has 1 guz/gaz = 2 ft officially recognized and in use. The guz is still commonly used in the Indian subcontinent. It has become the standard word in Hindi and Urdu for "yard".

Name

The word ''guz'' (also spelled ''guzz'', at the time) entered the Oxford English Dictionary in the late 19th century, having been originally submitted by the noted lexicographer William Chester Minor, originally as being equal to in India (so that "5 guzz = 4 yards"). The word also is reputed to have given the Royal Navy base at

HMNB Devonport His Majesty's Naval Base, Devonport (HMNB Devonport) is one of three operating bases in the United Kingdom for the Royal Navy (the others being HMNB Clyde and HMNB Portsmouth) and is the sole nuclear repair and refuelling facility for the Roy ...

, in

Plymouth Plymouth () is a port city and unitary authority in South West England. It is located on the south coast of Devon, approximately south-west of Exeter and south-west of London. It is bordered by Cornwall to the west and south-west. Plymouth ...

, the affectionate nickname of "Guzz", as sailors referring to the Dockyard, used to regularly abbreviate the word to simply "The Yard", leading to the slang use of the Hindi word for the unit of measurement of the same name.

Regional definitions

Arabia

In Arabia, it varied between .

Persia

In Persia, it was reported in the 1880s that 1 guz was for cloth, but for silk and carpet.

Nepal

In Nepal, 1 guz was in the 20th century.

Southeast Asia

Malay Malay may refer to: Languages * Malay language or Bahasa Melayu, a major Austronesian language spoken in Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore ** History of the Malay language, the Malay language from the 4th to the 14th century ** Indonesi ...

''gaz'' is around or 83.82 centimetres.