Throughout the book, Arabic words have been transliterated according to the system used by the International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies. Persian words have been transliterated as if they were Arabic. Common terms, place names, and names of ethnic groups and persons are mainly written without diacritical marks, except for authors and titles of primary sources. For Russian, I have used a simplified version of the Library of Congress transliteration system. Chinese names and terms have been transliterated according to the pinyin Romanization system, with certain exceptions. I have left transliterations of Chinese names and terms in the titles of cited publications as originally published, which are commonly rendered in the Wade-Giles system. Pronunciations of Chinese characters in Late Middle Chinese have been given according to a system modified from Edwin G. Pulleyblank’s Lexicon of Reconstructed Pronunciation in Early Middle Chinese, Late Middle Chinese, and Early Mandarin. I have retained or not included punctuation in Chinese texts following the editions from which they were extracted.
Place names have generally been given in their widely accepted English spelling. For geographical references of Central Asia during the Qarakhanid period I have followed Yuri Bregel’s An Historical Atlas of Central Asia (Samarqand, Kashghar, Balasaghun, etc.). For identification and translation of ancient non-Chinese place names I have used Feng Chengjun and Lu Jungling’s Xiyu diming and Chen Jiarong, Xie Fang, and Lu Junling’s Gudai Nanhai diming huishi. Non-Chinese personal and place names known only in their Chinese transcriptions have been provided in pinyin and in some cases, with its certain or possible reading in the original language. Chinese official titles have been translated into English mostly according to Charles Hucker’s A Dictionary of Official Titles in Imperial China.
The following Chinese weights and measures circulated during the Song period have been used in the book:
Weight
1 liang (tael) = 40 gm
1 jin (catty) = 16 liang = 640 gm
Liang is the basic unit of traditional Chinese silver measurement.
Capacity
1 dan = 10 dou = 100 sheng
1 sheng = 720 ml
Dan is the basic unit of the traditional Chinese volume measurement for grain.
Length and Distance
1 zhang = 10 chi = 3.14 meters
1 chi = 10 cun = 100 fen = 31.4 cm
1 li = 565.2 meters
Counters
1 pi – a bolt of silk had a standard length and value, roughly 56 cm wide and 12 m long
1 guan – a string of 1000 coins (wen)
In the Song period, 1 guan often contained fewer coins but was counted as equivalent to a full string of 1000 coins. The counter guan sometimes can be omitted in Chinese texts, particularly when it refers to a large amount of cash. For instance, the counter wanguan, which is equivalent to 10,000 guan is often written as wan. In this book, for simplicity reasons, all amounts have been given in guan.