Arabic words and names in this book have been transliterated according to a system that allows those who know the Arabic alphabet to reconstruct the original spelling. Readers curious about the pronunciation of these names and words can refer to the ÝNote on Pronunciation’ at the back of the book. Others will not miss much if they simply ignore the dots and bars of the transliteration and pronounce the words as if they were English. Where a name or word has a standard English form (like Saladin), it has been used. The glossary gives brief definitions of all the Arabic words that occur in the book, whether they have been Anglicized or not. The intent of the glossary is not to provide scholarly descriptions of the terms, but to help in achieving one of the author’s main goals: to make his book intelligible to those who have no specialist knowledge of Arab history.