Measurement is one of the basic building blocks of human society. Without a concept of size, civilisation could hardly have developed: cities could not have been built, while trade and contact between different communities would have remained severely limited. For nomadic societies, including those of the Altaic world, measuring time and distance was also a way of defining identity — locating people in a particular place and period within an ever-changing world.

Most cultures have used the human body as the basis for systems of measurement. The hand, forearm and foot were used as measuring tools in many civilisations, including ancient Egypt some 5,500 years ago. Most systems defined one unit in relation to another, effectively treating the human body as a set of proportions. A forearm, for example, could be divided into several palms, and a palm into several fingers. Conversely, a palm could be defined as a certain number of fingers and a forearm as a certain number of palms.

Yet methods of measurement and the terminology associated with them differed from place to place, meaning that apparently similar units could represent different lengths. The Greek historian Herodotus was already well aware of these differing definitions of measurement in the fifth century BC.

The nomadic societies of Central Asia, including Turkic and Altaic peoples, did not initially build cities. Instead, they developed their culture and identity through social organisation, tradition and customary law. Nomadic tribes were capable of producing highly sophisticated bronze, silver and gold objects, often reaching remarkable levels of craftsmanship.

Altaic nomadic society also developed a strong tradition of oral literature, making it an alternative to the written word and reflecting a way of life that was not dependent on the built environment, printed literature or written poetry.

Different natural environments and contact with merchants travelling along the Silk Road may have placed pressure on Turkic languages to adapt their commercial vocabulary. Some of the most basic words, however, remained shared across much of the Turkic world.

Turkic peoples have a long history of closely related languages stretching back to the eighth-century Orkhon inscriptions, found near the Selenga River in Mongolia. They lived across a vast territory extending through Central Asia, often under very different environmental conditions and with widely differing social needs.

Words describing methods of measurement display a certain degree of linguistic unity because many share a common root. Over time, however, the actions these words described could develop independently of that root.

The word qarı, for example, referred to an outstretched arm. Yet its derivatives could describe measurement with an extended arm in one language and measurement using the lower leg of an animal in another. It is therefore hardly surprising that the actual lengths represented by these words could also vary considerably.

The form qarı served as a root word for measurement terminology in Turkic languages. The systems derived from words such as qarı were clearly far from uniform. Suffixes could be added to the root to change the meaning — for instance, shifting from measurement with the forearm to measurement with the hand.

Terms used in this way included qarılamak, meaning “to measure with the forearm,” and qarıšlamak, “to measure with an outstretched hand.”

Even the root itself developed several meanings. Qarı can refer to a cubit — from the Latin cubitum, meaning “elbow” — a measure of roughly 45 centimetres defined as the distance from the elbow to the fingertips, although the precise length varied depending on the method used.

In some languages, the same word refers to half a sazhen, defined as the distance from the middle of the chest to the fingertips. A full sazhen, meanwhile, is the distance between the fingertips of a person’s fully outstretched arms, or 1.829 metres.

The word has also been used to describe the lower part of a four-legged animal’s leg from the knee downward, as well as a unit for measuring cloth.

The table below shows equivalents of the Turkish word qarıš across Turkic languages and dialects.

References to the earliest use of the measurement term qarıš can be found in TMEN and EDPT. According to Doerfer, it is uncertain whether Turkic qarı, meaning “forearm,” is related to Mongolian gar, meaning “hand, forearm” (TMEN III: 1477).

Clauson suggests that qarıš may be a derivative of the verb *qar-: qarı, qarıš, meaning “span.” According to him, qari originally meant “forearm” and later developed such meanings as “forearm, upper arm, cubit” and others. Both nouns may ultimately derive from the verb *qar-.

Clauson also notes that qarıš displays only minor variation and has survived across all modern Turkic language groups with relatively small phonetic changes. The word denotes a “span” — the distance between the tips of the outstretched thumb and little finger.

Qarıš appears to be a derived word, although its root remains uncertain. Its original form is qarı, meaning “forearm,” as shown in the table. During the Old Uyghur period, the word took the form qarič. In modern Uyghur and Uzbek, it is still found as qarič, while other Turkic languages and dialects use the form qarıš.

Münevver Tekcan suggests that the phonetic and semantic development from qarı to qarič–qarıš is connected to the diminutive suffix +(X)č < qarı+(X)č.

The original word qarı, for example, carried meanings including “forearm, upper arm, cubit, half a sazhen, distance from the middle of the chest to the fingertips.” Adding the suffix +(X)č produces qarı+č, meaning “span” — the distance between the tip of the thumb and the tip of the little finger of an outstretched hand. In other words, it represents a smaller measurement than the original word without the suffix.

From the Middle Turkic period onward, the final /č/ in qarıš changed to /š/. Tekin argued that the consonant /č/ in Turkic dialects was the earlier, original form, while /š/ was secondary (Tekin: 169–274).

Turkish also shows spirantisation of certain stop consonants, although this occurs in spoken language rather than in writing: sagdıš < sagdıč, kulaš < kulač, yamaš < yamač, gešti < geçti, and so on.

The history of qarıš alone shows that the vocabulary underlying measurement, trade and commerce has anthropometric roots and shares a universal characteristic: everyday measurements are often based on parts of the human body.

Both specialised activities and ordinary communication involving measurement create or borrow words in similar ways. Different suffixes attached to qarıš can describe different actions, while even the suffix added to qarı reflects a change in the type of measurement itself. This points to the increasing complexity of linguistic and cultural phenomena across the Turkic world.

Ultimately, qarıš is more than a unit of measurement. It represents a deep connection between the body, language and culture in the Turkic world. As Münevver Tekcan demonstrates, the word has travelled a long historical path — from a term for the forearm to a more precise measure defined as the distance between the tips of the thumb and little finger.

Changes in its form and meaning reflect broader historical processes: the transition from nomadic to settled life, from oral tradition to written culture, and from myth to science.

For Kazakhstan and other inheritors of Turkic civilisation, studying concepts such as qarıš offers a way to recover cultural memory and understand how the worldview of earlier generations remains encoded in language.

Contained within the word qarıš is an entire layer of history — a system of measurement in which the human being remains the measure of all things.