Women, the State, and Political Liberalization: Middle Eastern and North African Experiences

Laurie A. Brand

Columbia University Press

1998

A Note on Transliteration

 

As a longtime transliteration purist, I have been confounded by how to deal with North African names. Not only are their vowelling patterns far removed from those of classical Arabic, but also the French rendition of them—the spellings most widely used—removed them even further from anything familiar to those who do their work on the Mashriq or the Gulf. Imposing a standardized classical Arabic transliteration system throughout this manuscript would have turned many North African names into collections of letters virtually unrecognizable to those most familiar with them. Hence, I have opted for a solution which is pragmatic, if not consistent: I have generally replicated names as I found them on (in) books, articles, and business cards. I beg the indulgence of the remaining, and, I suspect dwindling, community of purists.