McMeekin - The Ottoman endgame : war, revolution, and the making of the modern Middle East, 1908-1923

Until the Bolsheviks switched over to the Gregorian calendar in 1918, Russia followed the Julian, which was thirteen days behind by 1914. The Ottoman Empire traditionally used a modified version of the Islamic lunar calendar, with years dated from the time of Muhammads exodus from Mecca (hejira) in AD 622although it switched over to the Julian version of solar calendar dates in the nineteenth century (except for Muslim religious holidays, which still, to this day, are dated by the old lunar calendar). To keep things simple, I have used Gregorian dates consistently throughout the text, with the exception of certain major pre-1918 dates in Russian history, which Russian history buffs may know by the old dates, in which case I have given both dates with a slash, as in March 1/14, 1917, where 1 is the Julian and 14 the Gregorian date.

For Russian-language words, I have employed a simplified Library of Congress transliteration system throughout, with the exception of commonly used spellings of famous surnames (e.g., Yudenich, not Iudenich; Trotsky, not Trotskii). I have also left out soft and hard signs from the main text, so as not to burden the reader.

With regard to Turkish spellings, I have generally rendered the c phonetically as dj (as in Djavid and Djemal) and used the dotless where appropriate (it sounds a bit like uh) to differentiate from the Turkish i, which sounds like ee. Likewise, I have tried to properly render (sh) and (ch) to help readers puzzle out pronunciations, even if these letters are really post-1928 concoctions of Atatrks language reforms. With Arabic names, I have used the most widely known Western variants (thus Hussein, not al-Husayn ibn Ali al-Hashimi, and Ibn Saud, not Abd al-Aziz ibn Abd al-Rahman al-Saud). It is impossible to be consistent in all these things; may common sense prevail.

With apologies to any Turkish readers, I have referred to the Ottoman capital consistently as Constantinople, not Istanbul, unless referring to the present-day city, because it was so called by contemporaries, including Ottoman government officials. Likewise, I have followed the transition in nomenclature from St. Petersburg to Petrograd after Russia went to war with Germany in 1914 (luckily, we do not have to reckon with Leningrad in the bounds of this narrative). With lesser cities and other place-names, I have used the contemporary form, affixing the current equivalent in parentheses, thus Adrianople (Edirne) and skp (Skopje). Antique geographic terms used by Europeans but not by the Ottomans, such as Palestine, Cilicia, and Mesopotamia, I have generally deployed in the manner they were used in diplomatic gamesmanship (which is to say without precise territorial definition, as there was not any). The maps should, in any case, help readers clear up these vexatious questions to the extent this is possible.

All translations from the French, German, Russian, and Turkish, unless otherwise noted, are my own.