Note on Dates, Names, and Transliteration
Unless otherwise indicated, all dates given in this book (years and centuries) refer to the Gregorian Calendar (“CE”). In the few instances in which Islamic (Hijri) lunar years are given, they precede the Gregorian date (e.g., 656/1258). In the footnotes and bibliography, references to books and articles published in Iran include the solar Hijri (occasionally lunar) or Persian Imperial date, followed by the Gregorian date.
While I have adopted an approach to the transcription that is capable of accommodating both Persian and Arabic (mainly through the guidelines given by the International Journal of Middle East Studies), I have preferred to rely on a simplified method for the transcription of modern publications in Persian. For the sake of readability, I have preferred to transcribe the names of the most common premodern Persian poets among the Anglophone readership (such as Saʿdi, Hafez, Rumi, etc.) according to the simplified method. In the case of cities and dynasties that are familiar to Anglophone specialized audiences, I have not specified the long vowels. For the Mongol names, I have tried to stay close to the conventional forms used by specialists in the field of Mongol and Ilkhanid studies. While the word “ghazal” appears throughout the book as an English word, I have chosen to italicize “qasida” without recurring to a full transliteration (qaṣīda).