Persian Gulf States - Preface

Preface

This edition of Persian Gulf States: Country Studies replaces the previous edition, published in 1984. Like its predecessor, the present book attempts to treat in a compact and objective manner the dominant historical, social, economic, political, and national security aspects of the five contemporary states of the Persian Gulf covered in this volume--Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. Sources of information included scholarly books, journals, and monographs; official reports and documents of government and international organizations; and foreign and domestic newspapers and periodicals. Available economic data for these countries are not always complete or may be inconsistent.

Chapter bibliographies appear at the end of the book; brief comments on some of the more valuable sources for further reading appear at the conclusion of each chapter.

The transliteration of Arabic words and phrases posed a particular problem. For many of the words--such as Muhammad, Muslim, Quran, and shaykh--the authors followed a modified version of the system adopted by the United States Board on Geographic Names and the Permanent Committee on Geographic Names for British Official Use, known as the BGN/PCGN system; the modification entails the omission of all diacritical markings and hyphens. In numerous instances, however, the names of persons or places are so well known by another spelling that to have used the BGN/PCGN system might have created confusion. The reader will find Mecca rather than Makkah, Oman rather then Uman, and Doha rather than Ad Dawhah. In addition, although the five governments officially reject the use of the term Persian Gulf--as do other Arab governments--and refer to that body of water as the Arabian Gulf, the authors followed the practice of the United States Board on Geographic Names by using Persian Gulf or gulf.

The body of the text reflects information available as of January 1993. Certain other portions of the text, however, have been updated. The Country Profiles include updated information as available and the Bibliography lists published sources thought to be particularly helpful to the reader.

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