The complex history of interaction among Turkish, Ottoman, Persian, and Arabic languages leads to unavoidable complexities of orthography and transliteration in any English-language work rooted in this linguistic nexus. From Rumi to the Whirling Dervishes includes transliterations from modern Turkish and Ottoman Turkish; from Persian in standard Latinisation and modern Turkish Latinisation; and from Arabic. The Latin alphabet replaced the Ottoman Arabic script for the language of the Republic

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... Turkey in 1928. Persian continues to be written in Iran and in Afghanistan in its variant of the Arabic script. Persian in modern Turkish Latinisation appears in the selections from the Mevlevi ayins, whose Persian lyrics have been printed in Turkish Latinisation beginning with the Darülelhan publications of the 1930s and continuing until today. Since this transliteration also reflects the manner in which Persian lyrics have been sung by the Mevlevis for many generations, readers are advised to become familiar with it. In addition, much of the relevant Turkish and Persian vocabulary originates in the Classical Arabic language. Most of these words appear in the Glossary of this book, together with their Arabic source word. In modern Turkish orthography, several European languages -but not English -became models for writing consonants as well as for umlauted 7379_Feldman.indd 12