TOMAUN, s. A Mongol word, signifying 10,000, and constantly used in the histories of the Mongol dynasties for a division of an army theoretically consisting of that number. But its modern application is to a Persian money, at the present time worth about 7s. 6d. [In 1899 the exchange was about 53 [crans] to the £1; 10 Crans = 1 tumān.] Till recently it was only a money of account, representing 10,000 dīnārs; the latter also having been in Persia for centuries only a money of account, constantly degenerating in value. The tomaun in Fryer's time (1677) is reckoned by him as equal to £3, 6s. 8d. P. della Valle's estimate 60 years earlier would give about £4, 10s. 0d., and is perhaps loose and too high. Sir T. Herbert's valuation (5 × 13s. 8d.) is the same as Fryer's. In the first and third of the following quotations we have the word in the Tartar military sense, for a division of 10,000 men:
1298.—"You see when a Tartar prince goes forth to war, he takes with him, say, 100,000 horse ... they call the corps of 100,000 men a Tuc; that of 10,000 they call a Toman."—Marco Polo, Bk. i. ch. 54.
c. 1340.—"Ces deux portions réunies formaient un total de 800 toumans, dont chacun vaut 10,000 [dinars] courants, et le dinar 6 dirhems."—Shihābuddīn, Masālak-al Abṣār, in Not. et Exts. xiii. 194.
c. 1347.—"I was informed ... that when the Kān assembled his troops, and called the array of his forces together, there were with him 100 divisions of horse, each composed of 10,000 men, the chief of whom was called Amīr Tumān, or lord of 10,000."—Ibn Batuta, iv. 299-300.
A form of the Tartar word seems to have passed into Russian:
c. 1559.—"One thousand in the language of the people is called Tissutze: likewise ten thousand in a single word Tma: twenty thousand Duuetma: thirty thousand Titma."—Herberstein, Della Moscovia, Ramusio, iii. 159.
[c. 1590.—In the Sarkár of Kandahár "eighteen dinárs make a tumán, and each tumán is equivalent to 800 dáms. The tumán of Khurasán is equal in value to 30 rupees and the tumán of Irák to 40."—Āīn, ed. Jarrett, ii. 393-94.]
1619.—"L'ambasciadore Indiano ... ordinò che donasse a tutti un tomano, cioè dieci zecchini per uno."—P. della Valle, ii. 22.
c. 1630.—"But how miserable so ere it seemes to others, the Persian King makes many happy harvests; filling every yeere his insatiate coffers with above 350,000 Tomans (a Toman is five markes sterlin)."—Sir T. Herbert, p. 225.
[c. 1665.—In Persia "the abási is worth 4 sháhis, and the tomán 50 abásis or 200 sháhis."—Tavernier, ed. Ball, i. 24.]