About this Guide
Coptic Studies poses some unique challenges which the ordinary conventions of academic writing are ill-suited to handle. Some of these problems (like how to represent Arabic names and words in English letters) are held in common with other fields like Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies, but Coptic sources bring their own unique difficulties too, such as how to fit clergy and monks into an alphabetically-ordered bibliography. There is still no standard solution for many of these problems, and different scholars tend to employ different conventions to get around them.
This page provides a few recommendations for scholars in contemporary Coptic studies that are generally adhered to on ACCOT, although they are only recommendations; to quote a famous pirate, they are “more guidelines than actual rules.”
Transliteration of Arabic Words
It is often easier and more reader-friendly to represent Arabic words and short phrases with English letters (e.g. mālik instead of مالِك). Like most academic fields that deal with Arabic texts, ACCOT uses the IJMES Transliteration system to render Arabic words.
The IJMES system requires you to use several special characters that you may not know how to type, particularly vowels with macrons (ā, ē, ī, ō, ū) and underdotted consonants (e.g. ṣ, ḍ, ẓ, ṭ, ḥ). A slow but easy solution is to simply copy these symbols from a webpage like this one or from the IJMES chart and paste them into your document.
Windows: On Windows, one of the best solutions is a third-party tool called WinCompose which allows you to insert special characters using a hotkey followed by an intuitive sequence of keys. For instance, to insert the character ā, you simply press the hotkey followed by the minus key and then the letter a. To get ṣ, press the hotkey, then ! and then the letter s.
MacOS: On Mac, macrons can be inserted over any vowel by holding down the key and then pressing the appropriate number key from the special characters that appear. Underdots can be inserted by pressing Option + x followed by the character you wish to underdot.
Spelling Arabic Names
Names should be spelled according to the IJMES system unless they already have an “accepted English spelling”. So for instance, «شنودا» should be rendered as “Shenouda” rather than “Shinuda” and «جرجس» as “Girgis” rather than “Jirjis”. But names that do not have a commonly used English spelling should be rendered according to the IJMES (e.g. «منقريوس» becomes “Manqaryus”).
Note that IJMES does not use any diacritic marks (macrons or underdots) in proper names. Thus, «حبيب» is written “Habib” rather than “Ḥābīb”. The same is true for the names of presses or publishers in bibliographies (however this is often ignored).
It is also worth noting that the IJMES form of Fr Matthew the Poor’s Arabic name is “Matta al-Miskin” (or Miskīn if diacritics are preserved).
Clergy Names and Titles in Bibliographies
- Clergy are listed in bibliographies according to the first letter of their last name. So Fr Bishoy Kamel would be listed under K for Kamel. The title “Fr” or “Hegumen” may be included in brackets after their first name, e.g. Kamel, Bishoy (Hegumen).
- Popes are listed by the first letter of their name and never under P for Pope. In the bibliography, Pope may be included after name and ordinal number separated by a comma, or simply omitted in the bibliography
- Shenouda III, Pope. The Release of the Spirit.
- Shenouda III. The Release of the Spirit.
- Bishops are listed by the first letter of their name and never under B for Bishop or A for Anba. It is often helpful to provide the bishop’s diocese. Bishop or Anba may be added after the name, separated by a comma.
- Athanasius, Metropolitan. The Doctrine of the Coptic Orthodox Church.
- Youannis, Anba. The Paradise of the Spirit.
- Bimen, Bishop of Mallawi. Grace and the Law.
- Coptic Monks have a personal name followed by al- and an adjectival form of their monastery’s name (e.g. Athanasius al-Makari, literally, Athanasius the Macarian). In bibliographies, monks are listed according to the first letter of their monastery’s name; the al- should always be ignored. So the example below would go under S for Suryani:
- al-Suryani, Antonios. Antonios al-Suryani to Wahib Atalla, Feb 1960.
- Note: Matthew the Poor/Matta al-Miskin is listed under M in one of the following forms:
- al-Miskin, Matta. Orthodox Prayer Life.
- Matta al-Miskin. Orthodox Prayer Life.
- Matthew the Poor. Orthodox Prayer Life.
Publisher vs Press in Arabic Publications
Unlike books published in the West, books in Egypt often distinguish between a book’s publisher (nāshir) and the press (maṭba‘a) where it was printed, providing the names of both. The convention is to treat the press (maṭba‘a) as the publisher for the purposes of citation and to omit the publisher (nāshir), unless the press is not indicated.
Citing Texts with Missing Publication Details
Many valuable Arabic texts (particularly pamphlets and short books) are published with incomplete details that make them difficult to cite accurately. Here are some tips on dealing with these situations:
- If the text’s author has a page on ACCOT, check the List of Works section (e.g. Bishop Bimen: Works). ACCOT often endeavours to track down missing publication information and it will sometimes happen that a missing year or publisher has been supplied to us by the publisher or some other source. However, failing that:
- If a text lacks a year of publication, follow the standard Chicago practice of writing “n.d.” in place of the year.
- If a text lacks a publisher and/or place of publication, but has other details like the name of an association (e.g. “The Sons of Pope Kyrillos”, “The Sons of Fr Yousef Asaad”) or the name and location of a particular parish church, those details can be substituted for the publisher in citations.