In this book I have adopted the most recent rules of transliteration recognized by Western Orientalists, with very slight variation, as explained below, but no transliteration can exactly express the vocalic differences of two languages, and the Roman characters in which Arabic words and phrases have been spelt give the sound of the original only approximately. Besides the inability of the characters of one language to represent the exact pronunciation of the words of another, there is this additional difficulty in romanizing Arabic words that in certain combinations the pronunciation does not follow the written characters; for example, al-Raḥmān is pronounced ar-Raḥmān, the sound of l merging in that of the next following letter, r. To this category belong all the letters which are known by the name of al-ḥurūf al-Shamsiyyah (lit., solar letters), and they are as follows: tā, thā, dāl, dhāl, rā, zā, sīn, shīn, ṣād, ḍād, ṭā, ẓā, lām, nūn (dentals, sibilants, and liquids). Whenever a word beginning with one of these letters has the prefix al (representing the article the), the lām is passed over in pronunciation and assimilated to the following consonant; in the case of all other letters, al is pronounced fully. This merging of one letter in another occurs also in certain other cases, for which a grammar of the Arabic language should be referred to.
I have represented the tā added either at the end of a noun for ta’nīth — to make a noun feminine or to attach to it the sign of the feminine gender — as in Makkat or Makkah or Madīnat or Madīnah, or at the end of a verb to make it a maṣdar or infinitive noun, as in raḥmat or raḥmah, either by t or by h, the latter being the proper way of sounding it when there is a waqf or a stop.
The system adopted is as follows:
Consonants
Arabic | Represented | |
Letter | Sound | by |
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hamzah . (sounds like h in hour — a sort of catch in the voice) . . . . . . . . . | ’ |
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bā . . . . . . (same as b) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | b |
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tā . . . . . . (the Italian dental, softer than t). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | t |
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thā . . . . . (between th in thing and s). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | th |
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jīm. . . . . (like g in gem) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | j |
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ḥā. . . . . . (very sharp but smooth guttural aspirate) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | ḥ |
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khā. . . . . (like ch in the Scotch word loch). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | kh |
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dāl . . . . . (Italian dental, softer than d) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | d |
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dhāl . . . . (sounds between z and th in that) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | dh |