As Amin Maalouf has said, he intends his work to be accessible to readers with no expert knowledge of the Middle East or the Arab world. At the same time, there seems little doubt that The Crusades Through Arab Eyes will be of special value to the growing number of people whose interest in Arab history and culture is more than merely casual. For this reason, it has been decided to transliterate the Arabic names and words that appear in the text. The standard system of transliteration adopted will be immediately comprehensible to those who know the Arabic alphabet. For those who do not, what follows is a rough guide to pronunciation.
The Arabic letters designated by Ñ, Ã, Û, and Ô are known as Ýemphatic’, or Ývelarized’, consonants. Their pronunciation is similar to the equivalent letters without the dots, except that the back of the tongue is raised slightly (towards the velum) and they are articulated more strongly, giving them a somewhat Ýdark’ sound. The Î is a very strongly aspirated sound originating in the back of the throat; although it has no equivalent in any European language, its sound is not unlike that of an emphatically articulated h. The symbol ’ represents a glottal stop, the sound that begins each syllable of the English expression Ýuh-oh’ or the Cockney t. The symbol Ý represents another sound with no European equivalent; phonetically, it is a voiced guttural stop produced in the very back of the throat, by constricting the larynx.
The combination dh represents the sound of the th in the English word then; kh is similar to the ch in the German ach or the Scottish loch, but is somewhat more guttural; gh represents a sound similar to the Parisian r, more or less the sound made when gargling.
Bars over the vowels (Á, Ð, Ù) indicate that they are to be pronounced long. Classical written Arabic, though rich in consonants, has only six pure vowels, three long and three short. The short ones are similar to the vowels in cat, did, and put; their long equivalents are, roughly, father, seen, and food. The diphthong ay is pronounced like the i in bite, aw like the ow in down.
All the other letters, including combinations of letters (th as in think, sh as in share), are similar to their English equivalents. The q is pronounced further back in the throat than the k.
In general, if the last syllable of a word has a long vowel or a diphthong, that syllable is accented. If the word has no long vowel or diphthong, it is accented on the third syllable from the end. Otherwise, the accent tends to fall on the penultimate syllable.
The hyphen does not stand for a sound, but simply indicates that the two components of a word are closely linked grammatically (for example al-, meaning Ýthe’, which is prefixed to the word which follows). It can be ignored in pronunciation.