Note on Translation, Transliteration, and Other Formal Conventions
Translations of foreign-language terms, phrases, and texts cited in this study are my own, unless otherwise specified. When I cite existing translations, this is indicated in footnotes. Any modifications to such translations are indicated in the footnotes as well. The Qurâan translations in this study are Alan Jonesâs, but I have modified them whenever it seemed necessary to me, in some cases quite significantly. Biblical citations in translation follow the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV).
I provide texts in their original language whenever they are not easily accessible. The Qurâan and the Bible are widely available online and in print. This is also true for some well-known premodern texts in Arabic, e.g., the history of al-ṬabarÄ«. Whenever I argue a point relating to the language in such well-known texts, I insert transliterations of the passages discussed in the translations. I provide original texts only in those cases in which I expect readers to encounter difficulties gaining access to them. This is true of Arabic poetry, especially the poetry of the Kharijites. I proceed in the same way when including excerpts from sermons. In the case of the sermons discussed in chapter 8, because of their length, I have placed the full Arabic language texts in an appendix at the end of the study.
I transliterate Arabic following the guidelines of the International Journal of Middle East Studies, with some modifications: notably, transliterations in this book do not show assimilation, e.g., al-shams instead of ash-shams, and whenever inseparable prepositions, conjunctions, and other prefixes are followed by the article alâ, I indicate elisions (e.g., wa-lâ, bi-lâ, li-lâ). In contrast to the IJMES transliteration style, however, I also indicate elision after independent prepositions (e.g., fÄ« lâ, Ê¿alÄ lâ). I transliterate Qurâan passages and poetry with case endings, but all other texts (thus historical and philological works or sermons) without case endings. I do not transliterate Arabic place names which have accepted English spellings. Otherwise, the following conventions are adopted: Qurâan and Qurâanic (uppercase, no italics), sura (lowercase, no italics). I cite verses of individual suras in the format Q [sura name] [sura number] colon [verse number] (e.g., Q al-FÄtiḥa 1:1).
Transliteration styles for Greek and Hebrew follow the guidelines provided by the handbook of the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL). Syriac is transliterated following the conventions adopted in George A. Kiraz, TÅ«rrÄá¹£ MamllÄ: A Grammar of the Syriac Language, Vol. 1, Orthography (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias, 2012), 31â90, with some modifications: I do not transliterate initial ʾ, and I transliterate sh rather than Å¡, for the sake of consistency with the Arabic transliteration style I have adopted. Additionally, I do not indicate spirantized consonants with underlined letters (e.g., ktÄbÄ, not kṯÄá¸Ä). My Syriac transliterations generally reflect the linguistically more conservative East Syriac pronunciation (e.g., agonÄ, not ʾagÅ«nÄ).