��Author’s Note
While there is a widely recognized system for the transliteration of
Arabic into English, along with specific diacritical markings to indi-
cate long and short vowels, I have endeavored, for the sake of clarity
and ease, to present all Arabic words in their simplest and most recog-
nizable English rendering. The Arabic letter hamza, which is rarely
vocalized, will occasionally be marked with an apostrophe. The letter
ain—best pronounced as a glottal stop—will be marked with a reverse
apostrophe, as in the word bay‘ah, meaning “oath.” Further, rather
than pluralizing Arabic nouns according to their proper grammatical
rules, I will simply add an s: thus, Kahins, instead of Kuhhan.
Unless otherwise indicated, all translations of the Quran are my
own.