Re: Arabic transliteration...?

[Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Uhh???? Arabic is written in an alphabetical script, with the vowels
> most often omitted. Medieval European scholar who knew Arabic would
> not have needed any transliterations, since er... well... this is
> a bit tautological, since they could read it straight away. What do you 
> have in
> mind there? Even if the VMS is a transliteration of Arabic (and I
> know enough Arabic to say "it's not"), how could a medieval
> transliteration do us any good, since it would amount to a simple
> substitution cipher.

Much as Annette described, I was thinking in terms of a mutant form of that 
transliteration, rather than that transliteration itself. :-/