HIMME Transliteration Schemes


Arabic


The transliteration scheme Encyclopaedia of Islam 3 was used. Names were normalized to present the nominative (thus Abū, not Abī or Abā) except in genitive constructions (e.g. Ibn Abī...). The references to Yāqūt al-Ḥamawī’s Muʿjam al-buldān are not divided among different forms of complex personal names (e.g. Abū Firās vs. Abū Firās al-Ḥamdānī). Names whose vocalization could not be deduced were written in ALL-CAPS (though only the first letter of a digraph is capitalized: thus ĀDhYN of آذين instead of ĀDHYN).


Armenian


The transliteration scheme of the United States Library of Congress (PDF) was used because in the late medieval period it provides spellings more comparable to Arabic and Persian transliteration. Different cases are not represented, but only the form as presented in the index.


Greek


The transliteration scheme of the United States Library of Congress (PDF) was used, treating all pre-1500 Greek as "medieval" (rather than pre-1453 as specified in the scheme), and also the Greek letter χ was transliterated 'kh' rather than 'ch' for consistency with Arabic and Persian transliteration. Inflected forms of the same name are separated by commas.


Hebrew


Hebrew text was mostly transliterated according to the academic style specified in the Society of Biblical Literature Handbook of Style (2014), except that 'sh' was used instead of 'š' for Hebrew ש. (For a comparative table of Hebrew Romanization schemes, see here.) Construct state plurals were normalized to absolute state. Unvocalized text is transliterated in ALL-CAPS (though the digraph 'sh' was capitalized as 'Sh': thus YHWShʿ for יהושע instead of YHWSHʿ).


Latin


Names were normalized to the nominative case. U/V and i/j were preserved from the edition used.


Persian


The transliteration scheme Encyclopaedia of Islam 3 was used, although clearly Arabic names in Persian texts might be transliterated as Arabic (e.g. with the Arabic definite article al-).


Syriac


The transliteration scheme basically follows that of the Gorgias Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Syriac Heritage, although Syriac ܫ is always represented 'sh'. Unvocalized text is transliterated as ALL-CAPS (though the digraph 'sh' was capitalized 'Sh': thus ShHΝShH for ܫܗܢܫܗ instead of SHHNSHH).