Four languages are represented in this volume: Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian, and Turkish. The translations are rendered into English using contemporary grammar and syntax. Effort has been made to remain as close as possible to the original language; however, where literal translation would have made the passage incomprehensible, approximation has been adopted.
Finding a single transliteration system for a large project that encompasses four languages and several academic fields proved difficult. The system adopted by the International Journal of Middle East Studies (IJMES) without macrons and diacritics was embraced for its simplicity and widespread use in various fields of area studies. The borrowed Arabic terms into Persian and Turkish are transliterated based on their common written form in the host languages, thereby retaining the linguistic variations and demonstrating the diversity, as well as the shared textual and oral traditions, of the literate communities. For example, for the Ottoman sources, variations such as the Arabic madrasa and the Turkish medrese, shaykh al-Islam and şeyhülislam, Muhammad and Mehmet, and so on have been maintained in accordance with IJMES’s guideline to “either transliterate or use the modern Turkish orthography.”
Dates are rendered into Gregorian unless shown otherwise in places in which it was vital to retain the Hijri date, such as in image captions, chronograms, seals, and calculations seen in the occult sciences chapters. In such special cases, both dates are provided.
Bibliographic citations are in accordance with the Chicago Manual of Style, seventeenth edition. The bibliography includes both the works cited in the essays as well as the translated sources. The books and articles listed in each chapter’s “Further Reading” section are omitted from the volume’s bibliographies unless the works are also cited in the essay.
