An article must be in English and may not exceed 10,000 words or thirty-five double-spaced pages in 12-point font (including main text, end-notes, tables, and figure captions) with 1-inch margins on all sides. Authors should submit the manuscript as an email attachment using a standard word-processing program. The entire manuscript—including notes, tables, and references—must be typed double-spaced and numbered consecutively. Dimashq follows a double-blind peer review process, so authors must avoid putting their names in headers or footers and avoid any references to themselves in the body or the end-notes such as might betray their identity to referees. Selected citations of the author’s well known published work may be included only if the absence of such citations would be conspicuous. Submissions should not include acknowledgments, but these can be added later if the manuscript is accepted. All submissions must include a 150-word abstract and a cover email or letter that includes the author’s name, academic discipline and institutional affiliation (if any), land-mail address, telephone number, and e-mail address. The Journal conforms to the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th Edition. Transliteration follows a modified Encyclopedia of Islam system, which is detailed on this page. The editor may return manuscripts that do not conform to the guidelines.

The start of the article and each section should be flush left; other paragraphs should be indented. Do not use desktop publishing features (justified text, bold and underlined fonts, etc.). Block indent long quotations (more than 50 words). Never cross-reference.

Use American spelling: color, not colour; analyze, not analyse; traveling, not travelling. Use serial commas: blue, green, and yellow. For quotations, use American style formatting, which puts the final period or comma inside the quotation marks, for example, “Gandhi said, ‘Poverty is the worst form of violence.’ ” For capitalizations, check the dictionary; when in doubt, do not capitalize. Examples: President Obama; president of the United States; the president.

Spell out whole numbers, cardinal and ordinal, from one to one hundred; for exceptions see the Chicago Manual of Style. For percentiles, use numbers but spell out “percent,” for example, 20 percent, except in tables and parentheses where it should be 20%. In both text and end-notes, use European, not American, date format, for example, 8 February 2010. Use 20th century, not twentieth century; 1990s, not 1990’s or the nineties. Do not use double dating; use common era (A.D.) dates only, unless quoting from an original source, in which case use the date as quoted (e.g., hijra) with the common-era equivalent in brackets.

Notes must be numbered consecutively throughout the text using Arabic numerals, double-spaced, and grouped together as endnotes following the text. Footnotes and in-text citations are not permitted, nor are bibliographies. All titles in non-Roman alphabets (Arabic, Cyrillic, etc.) must be transliterated and should follow English-language capitalization rules. Foreign titles in Roman alphabets (French, German, etc.) should follow the capitalization rules of that particular language. English translations of foreign language titles may be provided at the author’s discretion. Internet references must include a full URL and an accessed date. Cities of publication should include the country or U.S. state (e.g., Calif., Mass., N.Y.), except for major cities (Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York).

The style of note citations should conform to the following examples:

1 Stanford J. Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, 2 vols. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1977).

2 Jamil M. Abun-Nasr, A History of the Maghrib in the Islamic Period, 3rd ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987),

10; idem, Muslim Communities of Grace: The Sufi Brotherhoods in Islamic Religious Life (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 4.

3 Howard Crane, trans. and ed., Risale–i Mimarʾıyye: An EarlySeventeenth-Century Ottoman Treatise on Architecture, Studies in Islamic Art and Architecture 1 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1987), 71.

4 Martin Rein and Donald Schon, “Frame-Reflective Policy Discourse,” in Social Sciences and Modern States, ed. Peter Wagner, Carol Hirschon Weiss, Bjo¨ rnWittrock, and Helmut Wollman (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 262–89.

5 Clifford Geertz, “Toutes Directions: Reading the Signs in an Urban Sprawl,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 21 (1989): 291–306.

When references to the same work follow without interruption, use ibid. When notes to the same work follow after interruption, use the author’s last name and a shortened title of the book or article. Do not use op. cit.:

6 Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire, 2:6.

7 Ibid., 1:10–52.

8 Social Science Research Council, “Internationalization and Interdisciplinarity: An Evaluation of Title VI Middle East Studies Centers,” Social Science Research Council, http://www.ssrc.org/programs/mena/survey of middle east studies/ (accessed 20 March 2007).

9 Otis Glazebrook to the U.S. State Department, “Increase in Cost of Living Caused by War,” 3 November 1915, consular correspondence, American consulate in Jerusalem, record group 84, Vol. 72, National Archives at College Park, College Park, Md. (NACP).

10 Muhammad ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Maqrami, Al-Tajammu‘ al-Yamani li-l-Islah: Al-Ru‘ya wa-l-Masar—Dirasa fi al-Mash‘a wa-l-Tatawwur (Sanaa, Yemen: Yemeni Reform Gathering, 1998).

Tables, figures, and images must be cited in the text, for example (see Table 1). They should be numbered consecutively in Arabic numerals, captioned, and appear as a unit at the end of the article. They should not be interspersed in the text. Diagrams must be professionally rendered or computer generated; details should be large enough to remain legible at 50% reduction. When appropriate, photos may be submitted with a manuscript. Their use will be at the editor’s discretion. All images should be submitted in electronic format. For halftones or other illustrations, consult the editor.

1) Translations must be provided for all foreign-language terms and phrases (including book and article titles) that appear in the main body of the article, unless their meanings are widely known in English or they are cognate words whose meaning can be discerned with reasonable ease by English readers. Note: Dimashq considers Arabic and French  foreign languages.

2) Translations of foreign-language book, journal, and article titles in endnotes may be provided at the author’s discretion but are not required by Dimashq. If translations are included, they should appear in parentheses following the title in the original language, with no italics and outside any quotation marks. Do not use a translation as the title.

3) Translations should be composed artfully in clear, polished, idiomatic English. Unless the original text was written awkwardly according to the style conventions of the language in which it was written, it is not a skillful translation to put it in awkward English style, even if it is more “direct.” If you are deliberately attempting to translate linguistic infelicities present in the original text, use “[sic]” or an explanatory note in the text or an endnote to make that clear.

Dimashq adopts the transliteration guidelines of IJMES, which is considered a leader in the field of Middle East studies for its transliteration standards, and asks all authors to adhere to them carefully. Correct transliterations are the responsibility of the author. Please review the guidelines below and the appropriate transliteration chart before submitting any material with transliterated text to Dimashq.

For Arabic, use the IJMES Transliteration Chart (PDF). For Ottoman Turkish, use the IJMES Transliteration Chart or modern Turkish orthography consistently.

1) If an English term exists for a word, use it.

2) All technical terms from languages written in non-Latin alphabets must be italicized and fully transliterated with diacritical marks (macrons and dots), e.g., ʿashāʾ. A technical term is defined as a word for which there is no English equivalent and that is not found in Merriam–Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, or a multi-word phrase, excluding names and titles as detailed in #4 below. Diacritical marks, as well as the letters ʿayn and hamza, should be inserted using a Unicode font (see the IJMES Author Resources page).

3) Words found in Merriam–Webster’s should be spelled as they appear there and not treated as technical terms. They should have no diacritics, nor should they be italicized—for example, mufti, jihad, shaykh. See the IJMES Word List (PDF) for exceptions that preserve ʿaynand hamza, for example, Qurʾan, shariʿa, ʿulamaʾ, and Kaʿba.

4) Diacritics should not be added to personal names, place names, names of political parties and organizations, or titles of books and articles. These words should be spelled in accordance with the IJMES transliteration system but without diacritics. However, ʿayn and hamza should be preserved in all these cases (except for initial hamza, which is dropped). Do not italicize transliterated proper names, including titles of organizations, and do follow English capitalization rules: for example, al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun. Use italics for titles of books and journals only.

5) Arabic names of prominent political or cultural figures are spelled according to the IJMES transliteration system, but without diacritics. Note: IJMES no longer follows “accepted English spellings” for Arabic names of prominent figures; we now follow our transliteration system in all cases, e.g., Jamal ʿAbd al-Nasir. Names of living individuals may be spelled according to their preferred English spelling.

6) Place names with accepted English spellings should be spelled in accordance with English norms, for example, Baalbek, Damascus. This rule applies to cities of publication in citations. See the IJMES Word List for preferences among common spellings.

7) Follow English capitalization rules for transliterated titles. Capitalize all major terms, but not articles, prefixes, coordinating conjunctions, or prepositions (even when joined to pronouns). Use italics to indicate a book, newspaper, or periodical. Do NOT include diacritical marks but do preserve ʿayn and hamza. Ex. Faysal al-Tafriqa bayn al-Islam wa-l-Zandaqa; al-Nur al-Safirʿan Akhbar al-Qarn al-ʿAshir.

8) Avoid Anglicized plurals on fully transliterated words if possible: for example, fuqahā’ , not faqīhs. Exceptions may be made if there is a good reason for it, such as when comparing numbered quantities or currencies. Anglicized plurals may be used on words that are found in Merriam-Webster’s and thus not fully transliterated, e.g., muftis.

9) When in doubt, follow the spelling of the term in the script of the original languge, not its oral pronunciation. There are only a few exceptions (e.g., iḍāfa constructions), which are detailed on this page.

10) For colloquial transliterations, refer to an English-colloquial dictionary for that language. Use a consistent colloquial transliteration system, preferably one that is as close as possible to the IJMES system.

• The Arabictāʾ marbūṭa is rendered a not ah. In Arabic iḍāfa constructions, it is rendered at: for example, thawrat 14 tammūz.
• The nisba ending is rendered -iyya in Arabic (e.g., miṣriyya).
• Inseparable prepositions, conjunctions, and other prefixes are connected with what follows by a hyphen: bi-, wa-, li-, la-. Example: fī al-ʿirāq wa-miṣr. (Note: the preposition fīis not an inseparable prefix in the Arabic script and thus is not treated as one by IJMES.)
• Ellision. When one of the above prepositions or conjunctions is followed byal, the a will elide, forming a contraction rendered as wa-l-, bi-l-, li-l-, and la-l-. Example: fī miṣr wa-l-ʿirāq.
• Initial hamza is always dropped.
• The definite article (e.g., the Arabic al-) is lowercase everywhere, except when the first word of a sentence or an endnote. (Note: IJMES no longer capitalizes “al-” when the first word of a title unless it is the start of a sentence or endnote.)
• When an Arabic name is shortened to just the surname, the al- is retained. For example, Hasan al-Banna becomes al-Banna. Connectors in names—such as bin, ben, abu, etc.—are lowercase only when preceded by a name, e.g., Usama bin Ladin, but Bin Ladin, Ibn Khaldun, etc.
• See the IJMES Transliteration Chart(PDF) for a character-by-character map of our transliteration system.
• For specifics and exceptions, see the evolving IJMES Word List(PDF).