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Further Information & Downloads (last updated 05/12/06) Alhamdulillah, we have managed to get hold of contact details of a good brother, who runs a property business on Abbas Al-Akad (the high street for Medinat Nasr), that can help find accommodation in and around Medinat Nasr. He has helped many brothers and sisters over the years, and comes highly recommended as a trustworthy and honest person. As a local, he can help you get a fair price for accommodation, inshallah - which usually means many times less than you'd be quoted as a foreigner/soft target. With a local doing the haggling for you, one should get a very much nicer place for the same amount of money or less. To get a cleaner, decent property first time is probably more important for those with wives, sisters or families. He's also a good source of advice and general information about the area. We're not sure what his current rates are, but brothers used to give him around 150-200 LE per day, as he showed them accommodation. Remember, the work involves maintaining up-to-date lists, traveling around, and lots of phone calls to arrange viewings on your behalf. 1 or 2 days is usually enough to find a place. The money and stress saved was enormous, and to find a sincere local, whether this brother or someone else, is definitely the way to go. Al Masriya Property
Investment The
only issue is that his English is broken, and it may take a bit of effort
if one doesn't know any Arabic at all. The best way is probably to get a
friend, who does know some Arabic, to talk to him, over the phone perhaps,
at the start, just so
you can clarify what you are after. After that, when you meet him
face-to-face, there should be no problem with his English and your hand
waving. Please remember to give him our salaams if you meet him. A sister's account of her experiences out in Egypt - we have lifted this off the message board. We think it's a nicely written interesting account of a married sister's experiences out in Egypt - meeting people and learning Arabic at Markaz Ad-Diwan and more. Inshallah this will provide more insight for brothers and sisters about life out there. A list of things to take into account, some good advice and a book list is given by a brother from the US. The list is useful to help keep a record of factors to look at when deciding upon an Arabic institution, and we have put the advice on the page linked above for those who don't want to download the Excel spreadsheet. Free Qur'an Lexicon and Dictionary These are two parts to a pdf file which contains 80% of all the words in the Qur'an, and their meanings in English. So if you memorise these words you should be able to understand almost 80% of the Qur'an. Obviously grammar comes into it - but it's a great way to improve our learning of the Qur'an. Right click on these links and choose "Save Target As..." to save these .pdf files to your computer. You must have Adobe Acrobat installed on your PC to view these. The dictionary is a word-by-word translation of the Qur'an, in order to help you understand the meaning of each individual word as it us used in a surah. This file is .zip file, which will unzip to 8 .pdf files. There is also a Qur'an translation (not completed) and the above lexicons in German, Urdu, Hindi and Bengali. All in .pdf format, at emuslim.com. Installing an on-screen Arabic Keyboard onto Windows XP Please visit this website for details on installing an Arabic on-screen keyboard onto your English Windows XP. This allows you to switch between Arabic and English as needed. The site also has links for Arabic kindergartens (nursery schools where they only speak Fuss-ha to the kids).
Madeenah Books Fatwa Online's Learn Arabic section - Excellent set of documents and audio material to download here. All 3 Madeenah books for year 1, plus verb and conjugation charts, and the entire year 2 Arabic language syllabus as taught at the University of Madeenah. There is also over 4 hours of audio to go with these Madeenah arabic course books, by Shaykh Dr. V. Abdur-Raheem, in Real Audio format. Get these in their Audio section. A very useful book from Fatwa Online's resources is the handwriting practice book. 45 pages, in printable .pdf format. MadinahArabic.com - An excellent online set of tutorials for Madeenah Book 1. With full examples, excercises and answers, and audio for correct pronounciation. This is a really good resource to start book 1 at home. Also has a reading section for beginners to get their basic reading skills correct. Books and Dictionaries Dictionaries and a lot of other good quality books, both Western and Egyptian can be found in the American University of Cairo (AUC) bookshop off Midan Tahrir (it's on your left when you face the Mogamma). The AUC bookshop stocks a large range of books, including original Kitab Al-Assassi volumes (in colour), English-to-Arabic dictionaries, and a lot of general and academic books in English. It's just like an academic bookshop in the UK or US, with the same prices too. You will need a passport or other I.D. to enter the campus if you're not a student. http://www.aucegypt.edu/resources/bookstores.html People generally recommend Al-Mawrid and/or Hahns-Wehr as good dictionaries to start with. One really does need an Arabic-to-English and English-to-Arabic dictionary to learn. The pocket versions are cheaper, and are a good starting point. Amazon does both, as well as other dictionaries (this is a growing market, as so many people want to learn Arabic for different reasons today). IBC books (in the US) also do a selection of these. http://www.ibcbooks.com and http://www.amazon.co.uk and search out the dictionary sections. Voltage and Modem Adapters This site "Voltage Valet" has a list of all voltages and sockets used in different countries. You can then buy the correct adapters for your electrical equipment. As you can see Egypt uses 220v, 50Hz, 2 round pin sockets for electricity, and RJ11 for telephone/modem jacks.
Arabic Language Sites The Habaib message board - is nice and active message board with a focus on Arabic studies for muslims, which has postings covering a broad range of topics (both related and unrelated). Rawdah-at-Talibin - Good site with information about Egypt and Syria, plus links to various articles. Look under the "Arabic Language" link. Syria is a place that is getting to be more and more recommended amongst brothers and sisters - although people still say Egypt is the best organised (and most expensive). Al-Badr in Saudi Arabia - There are a number of places in The Kingdom Of Saudi Arabia that offer Arabic. This one is based in Jeddah and Mecca. Others can be found on the sites listed below. Mahad Medina - A "strictly salafi" (their words) school in Yemen, for those who prefer this sort of environment. Deen-Intensive - A good list of Islamic language school oriented links. A list of Arabic schools - Just so we can see just how many countries are offering this service. Obviously most schools on this list will focus on western non-muslim students. The list of countries offering courses includes Tunisia, Morocco, Yemen, Lebanon, Jordan, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Mauritania and Kuwait.
Here are some further Arabic study links:
Information
about studying in Mauritania.
General Sites IslamAlways.com - a multimedia site for non-muslims, and muslims who have questions about Islam. Tackles some of the "toughest" questions, with plenty of videos and online chat rooms. As-Sahwah.com - a good all round information and news site. IslamToday.net - a very good, up to date site for fatwa's and news. Islam-QA.com - another very good site for questions and answers. SunnahOnline.com - excellent site covering an extensive range of subjects. Islamway.com - has one of the most extensive collections of Qura'an recitation for download. Look in the Quran and audio section. Islaam.com - a nice site with articles on many subjects. See the section on knowledge for ahadith on learning.
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