Imamatpedia:Manual of style/transliteration

From Imamatpedia

There are a lot of articles with non-English words in them, that could be hard to pronounce for one who is not familiar enough with Farsi or Arabic. Those names are transliterated only in the first line of the article, according to the transliteration method of Encyclopaedia of Islam, published by Brill.

For example, the name شيخ عباس قمی is transliterated as Shaykh ʿAbbās Qummī.

Here's the table of Arabic letters which need spacial characters:

Letter Symbol
ء ʾ
ع ʿ
حاء Ḥ , ḥ
صاد Ṣ , ṣ
ضاد Ḍ , ḍ
طاء Ṭ , ṭ
ظاء Ẓ , ẓ
آ Ā , ā
او Ū , ū
ای Ī , ī
  • Apart from non-English names, there are some non-English words; note to not capitalize the first letter of, such as: zakat, salat, rijal, etc.

Farsi Silent h

When a Farsi word ends with a silent h (Farsi: "ه غیر ملفوظ" or "ه جایگزین کسره") which is pronounced like a short "i", the sound should be transliterated as "a", e.g. kitabkhana (کتابخانه), e.g. Tunayi (تونه‌ای)

Al-Hamza al-Wasl

When al-hamza al-wasl (الهمزة الوصل) comes after a word ending with a vowel (i.e. "a", "i", "u") it is not transliterated. Most of the cases are the al-hamza al-wasl in "al-" but there are other cases as well. Allah is the only exception of the above rule.

Farsi genitive cases

In Farsi genitive cases, the final kasra of the word in the construct state (mudaf) is transliterated as '-e'. However, there are exceptions: When the word ends in 'e', the genitive kasra changes to '-ye', E.g. 'Bank-e Markazi-ye Iran'. When the word ends in silent h, the kasra changes to 'yi', E.g. 'Kitabkhana-ye Milli'.

Al-Ta al-Marbutah (ة)

Al-Ta al-marbuta is written as h in names such as: Mu'awiyah, Fatimah.

In the name of books and in Arabic phrases ة is transliterated between a genitive case (ترکیب اضافی): Laylat al-Mabit. Contrary to adjective phrases (ترکیب وصفی) where it is not transliterated: Al-Hikmah al-muta'aliyah fi l-asfar al-'aqliyyah al-arba'ah

After alef (ألف) al-ta' al-marbutah is written as t: Busr ibn Artat, zakat, salat.

Arabic Attached Particles

Dashes may be used to separate Arabic attached particles: li-takunu (لتکونوا), li-l-dhakar (للذکر)