Throughout the text I have followed the International Journal of Middle East Studies (IJMES) transliteration scheme for Arabic and Persian names and terms. For Russian and Cyrillic names and places I have used the Library of Congress Russian romanization system, minus the ligatures for ease of reading. The difficulty with names of places and sites in modern Turkmenistan is that they have undergone a series of changes through languages and scripts in the 20th and 21st century. For ease of comparison with the literature on these sites, I have kept those names I have found in Russian as transliteration from Cyrillic. Toponyms from sources post-1991 are given with their Turkmen spelling. Akja Gala has now entered more common usage in Turkmen as a well-known site, following a recent surge in interest in Silk Roads, so I use this name, but with the spelling of Kala for consistency with the other well-known “kala” sites used in English-language publications. I appreciate that for some it would be preferable to use an Arabic transcription of qalʿa but I am treating these as modern phonetic toponyms rather than descriptors.
Names, dynasties, and places that are commonly in English usage have kept their most common form in English for clarity, e.g. Karakum (as opposed to Garagum or Qaraqum), hajj instead of ḥajj, Samarkand as opposed to Samarqand, and Abbasids (not ʿAbbāsids). In the text “khān” is used to refer to a lodging place or caravanserai, whereas the anglicized form “khan” refers to a king.
All dates are given in the Gregorian calendar (BCE/CE), except where hijri (AH) dates are particularly relevant where both are given.