51Note on Transliteration

The Crisis of Empire in Mughal North India:

Awadh and Punjab, 1707-48

Muzaffar Alam Print publication date: 2013 Print ISBN-13: 9780198077411 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: May 2013

DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198077411.001.0001

(p.lxiii) Note on Transliteration

THE PERSIAN AND INDIAN TERMS not in common use in the English language have been italicized, and their plurals have been indicated by adding the letter s.

It was not felt necessary to use diacritical marks each time these terms (as also the names drawn from Persian, Arabic or Indian sources) appear in the text and footnotes. In doing so, my principal consideration has been the convenience of the reader and more than that a concern for error-free printing. Over-insistence on diacriticals, it has been observed, entails for printers a heavy task which they rarely carry out satisfactorily. However, I have used the Greek spiritus asper (‘) and spiritus lenis (’) for ‘ain and hamzah respectively, where pronunciation of the words without these marks, I thought, would have been atrocious. Again, to serve the interests of exactness, all non-English words including technical terms, names of persons and the titles of books have been spelt with diacritical marks in the Index and Bibliography.

In spelling and transliteration of the Perso-Arabic and Turkish words, I have generally followed the system adopted by F. Steingass in his Comprehensive Persian-English Dictionary. A dot under ‘d’, ‘r’ and ‘t’ as ḍāk, wāṛa and Jaṭṭ represents the harder sounds of these letters in Indian languages.

I have, however, diverged from Steingass’ system in transliteration of the combined words. In Persian combined words I have preferred to put a hyphen (-) between the first word (muẓāf/mauṣūf) and the (p.lxiv) letter ‘i’ indicating its combination with the second (muẓāf-ilaih/ṣifat). I have written, for instance, dīwān-i khāliṣa and wakīl-i mut̤laq while Steingass would have written them dīwāni khāliṣa and wakīli mut̤laq. I have also differed from him in transcribing the word madad-i ma‘āsh, which he writes madad-ma‘āsh. Besides, I have

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52Note on Transliteration

preferred simpler spelling for words like khud and khurāk. Steingass has written them khwud and khwurāk.

In Perso-Arabic combinations, the Arabic definite article al has been consistently transcribed ul placed between two hyphens (-ul-). This is apparently simpler than Steingass’ ‘u’l-’, is in keeping with the Indo-Persian pronunciation system and, above all, separates distinctly the three components of the combination, the two words joined together in iẓāfat by the article ul. I have followed the same pattern of transcription in combinations when the article is followed by a word beginning with a certain consonant. In such combinations, according to classical Perso-Arabic phonetics, the first letter of the second word gains a double sound, dislodging both the letter and sound of l of the article. I have thus written, for example, ʻAz̤īm-ush-Shān and Qamar-ud-Dīn whereas Steingass would have written ʻAz̤īm-usʼh-Shān and Qamaru’ d-Dīn. Steingass’ system appeared cumbersome and also failed to bring out clearly the three constituents of the combinations. Also, I have written simply Abul and Zulfiqār.

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