| Dates | Unless there is a particular reason for providing the Islamic, hijri date, all dates are AD. |
| References | In the notes to the text, given at the end of each chapter, references are usually to the name of the author or editor and a short form of the title of the work. Full titles, together with date and place of publication, are provided in the bibliography. See the list of abbreviations for the titles of journals, etc. |
| Transliteration | A full scholarly transliteration is not provided in the text but the bibliography and index are translit-erated. The bibliography reproduces the various methods of transliteration used by the authors cited. My transliteration follows the system of the Encyclopaedia of Islam, with the few modifications customary in works in English. On the whole, readers without any Arabic will safely ignore the transliteration symbols, but may wish to note the following: ‘ = the Arabic letter ‘ayn, a guttural sound produced by constricting the larynx; ’ = the hamza, a glottal stop like the tt in the Cockney pronunciation of butter; vowels are short unless they have a macron (¯) over them; ibn (abbreviated to b. in the middle of a name) = ‘son of’; B. (abbreviation of Banu) = ‘descendants of’, ‘family of’, ‘clan of’, ‘tribe of’, as appropriate. |