How to use this site

View the site

The best way to view this site is with the Firefox browser from Mozilla. It supports the latest standards in web technologies, some of which are used to develop this site. In acknowledgement of the fact that many people are still using Internet Explorer, I have tried my best to make this site work for that browser, as well, but until Microsoft releases an updated version of its browser, you will be better off with Firefox.

Read the Quran

This site is currently designed with the specific intent of reading the Quran. From whatever page you happen to be looking at, there should always be a link in the main menu to Read the Quran. Simply click on this link and the list of chapters (surahs) will be presented and you can begin reading. To take advantage of some of the other features of this site, see the description of those features below.

Navigating the Quran

From the Chapter List page, you can either select a particular chapter and begin reading, or you can use the page numbers immediately below the title to select other chapters. You can also use the <, > arrows to change pages.

After selecting a chapter, a set of 10 verses will be displayed. If the chapter has more than 10 verses, a list of page numbers similar to the one on the Chapter List page will be displayed. You can change pages by clicking on a page number or using the arrows.

Each verse will be marked by a verse number, which will also be a link to that verse. You can use that link in emails or other websites but right-clicking on the link and selecting either the "Copy Link location" or "Copy Shortcut" option from the menu and then paste the link whereever you want to use it.

Selecting Notes to View

When reading the Quran, you will most likely also want to display some notes along with the text, either notes that you have written or ones provided in supplementary texts.

You can choose the notes you want to display at two levels: by noteset and labels.

To access these settings, select the Notesets link in the Settings menu. To display the notes in a noteset, check the box next the noteset you want to see and click the Update Settings button. If you were currently reading the Quran, your display should change to include notes from that noteset.

If you are logged in and want to view your own notes, you may need to select the labels of the notes to display, including an [unlabeled] option. Only those notes that have labels assigned to them that you have checked in this list will be displayed. If you select the [unlabeled] option, notes that have no labels assigned to them will be displayed. Note: If you check the box to display your noteset, but do not select any labels or the [unlabeled] option, none of your notes will be displayed.

Searching the Quran

The searching functionality on almushaf.com works over the notesets, not the Quran, itself. This allows you to search through different translations and commentaries, including your own.

The main search page can be accessed from the Search link in the Main Menu. In the search form, you can fill in one or more of the search term options.

  • By filling in the Exact Phrase option, the entire phrase will be found exactly as you enter it.
  • The 'All of these Words' field will find each individual word (separated by a space), but those words do not necessarily need to be in the same order you enter them.
  • The 'Any of these Words' field will return notes that include any of the words you enter (separate by a space), even if only one of those words show up in the note.
  • The 'Not these Words' field lets you specify words that should not show up in any of the notes that get returned.
By entering values in more than one of these fields, the options are AND-ed together so that all of them must be true for the notes in the resultset. Note: It's pretty easy to confuse the search engine, so the results you get back may not be exactly what you expected, especially if you enter values in the 'Any of these Words' field along with any one of the other fields.

You can also select the chapters (surahs) to search over and the notesets to be included in the search. Both of these fields are multiple select lists, and you can select multiple options by holding down the Ctrl key while you make your selections.

In the search results page, each note that matched the search criteria will be displayed along with a link to the verse that it is a note for. The results are ordered by the order of the verse they are related to.

Query Format

A search box containing the query that was executed is also displayed on the search results page, allowing you to see what query was executed and making it easy to adjust the query and running it again. The chapter (surah) selections and noteset selections for any subsequent searches will be the same as the ones used on the current search. The format of the search string is as follows:

  • Search terms are separated by a space.
  • Exact phrase search terms should be enclosed in double-quotes.
  • Negative search terms should be preceded by a minus sign.
  • Search terms separated by a | (pipe) sign will be treated as OR criteria, otherwise multiple terms are combined by AND logic.

As a convenience, a search box is also displayed while reading the Quran, where the expected format of the search is the same as described above. The chapter (surah) that is being read is the only one that will be searched, and the notesets that are currently displayed will be included in the search.

Customize Your experience

To make the site more enjoyable to use, I've made many of the display settings customizable for each visitor. To access these settings, click the Display Settings link in the Account menu.

Page Settings

The first group of settings, Page Settings, allow you do define the width of the page, as well as the color scheme for the site. The page width is defined in pixels and limited to the fairly reasonable range of 400-2000 pixels. The higher your screen resolution, the larger you can make your page width. The default is set to 900 pixels. The color scheme allows you to select a particular color palette and style for the site. Currently only 2 "skins" are provided, 'default' and 'none'. 'default' is probably what you are looking at now, while 'none' simply uses your browser's default settings. As more skins become available, I will post them in the What's New section.

Font Settings

The next group of settings control the Arabic fonts on the site. I have always found Arabic very difficult to read on my browser, perhaps because the font was bad or the size simply too small, so I wanted to make sure that everyone could read the Arabic of the Quran on this site comfortably. With these settings, you should be able to find a font / size for each level that suits you. All of the fonts are provided for free on the GNU Public License courtesy of ArabEyes.org. To preview the fonts and download/install them, simply click on the Font Details link.

When you've selected the settings you want, simply click the Save Settings button. All of these settings are stored in browser cookies, so if you share your computer with other people, don't be too surprise if you come back to this site and the settings have changed. If this becomes too much of a headache, I may be convinced to move the font settings to the database.

Accounts

To use almushaf.com to take your own notes on the Quran, you will need to create an account. There is not now, nor will there every be (God-willing), any charge for using this site.

I have tried to make the process of creating an account as painless as possible, and I promise not to use your email address for anything other than letting you login, helping you reset a lost/forgotten password, and for sending you backups of your notes for safekeeping. There's is an outside chance that I may need to contact you if there is a problem with your account, your data or the site in general that requires your attention.

Creating an Account

To create an account, simply click the Create Account link in the Account menu. You will be given a tiny form where you enter your name, email address (which you will use to login), and a password. If your account was successfully created, you will be automatically logged in to the site and you can begin taking notes.

Logging In

With a valid account, you can log into the site at any time. When accessing the site, you should see the login form in the Account menu. If you do not see it, you (or someone else) is already logged in. You can click the Logout link to display the form. In the form, enter the email address that you used to register at the site and your password and then click Login. If everything was successful, you will be logged in to the site. You will know if you are logged in if the Account menu changes to allow you to edit your account, change your password or logout. If login fails, you may have provided an invalid password. Either try again (remembering that both email address and password are case-sensitive) or follow the instructions for a Forgotten/Lost Password. Once you login, you will not be logged out until you click the Logout link in the Account menu, or close the browser.

Editing your Account Information

Once you're successfully been logged in to the site, you can edit the account information you have provided at any time. Simply click on the Edit Account link in the Account menu and enter your new name and email address. To change your password, you will need to go to the Change Password functionality described below. If you do not see the Edit Account link, you're probably not logged in.

Changing Your Password

If you ever feel the need to change your password, you can access this functionality by clicking on the Change Password link in the Account menu. If you do not see this link, you're probably not logged in, so log in first, then change your password. The link should take you to Change Password page where you will provide your current password (for added security) and your new password. When you've entered this information, just click the Change Password button.

Forgotten/Lost Password

If you've forgotten or lost you password, you can try retrieving it by clicking on the Reset Password link in the Account menu. Here you will need the email address you used when registering for the site. After entering your email address and clicking the Reset Password button, a new password will be generated for you and emailed to you at the address provided. Once you receive this email, you can log in using the new password and then change your password to something more memorable using the Change Password functionality.

If you've forgotten the email address you used to register with or can no longer receive emails at that address, you will need to contact me so that we reactivate your account.

Notesets

Notesets are collections of notes, each related to a particular verse (ayah) or chapter (surah) in the Quran. Any commentaries, translations, transliterations, etc. presented on this site will also be represented by a noteset.

When you create an account, a noteset is created for you that allows you to take your own notes. You can edit this noteset by clicking on your noteset's name ("my noteset", by default) in the list of notesets. From here you can change the noteset's name, manage the labels for this noteset or initiate a backup.

Taking notes

If you have chosen to display your noteset while reading the Quran, you will have the option of taking notes on the verses you are reading. An 'Add Note' link will be displayed under each verse. Clicking this link will display a form that allows you to create a note based on the verse you selected, as well as assign any number of previously-defined labels to that note. When you click Save, your note will be recorded and you will be taken back to the verse you were just reading. If the note you just created matches the display criteria you have selected, it should show up under your verse along with any other notes you may have already taken. If it does not show up, you will need to alter your note settings to display it.

If a note exists and is displayed according to the settings you have chosen, you will be given the option to 'Edit Note' or 'Delete Note'. The edit functionality allows you to change any of the text for this note, as well as the labels assigned. Deleting the note will actually delete the note, it does not simply hide it from your view. If you wish to hide a particular note, review your display options described above.

Labels

Within your noteset, you can define a number of labels, which can then be applied to your notes to help categorize and group them together. If you are at all familiar with GMail, the concept of labels will be nothing new. If not, labels can be thought of like folders, except that you can assign more than one label to any particular note.

You can manage your labels from the Edit Noteset page using the Add, Edit, Delete links. There is no data associated with a label other than its name, and there is currently no limit to the number of labels you can create. Caution: If you do delete a label, it will be removed from all of the notes that it was assigned to.

Assigning labels to notes is described in the section on Taking Notes, and filtering your view by labels is described in the section on Selecting Notesets to View.

Backups

Because this is not a commercial site with lots of VC funding and a huge server farm with redundancy and all that, I'm leaving it up to you to create your own backups of the notes you write. You can get these backups in two forms: xml and text. The text backup will hopefully be a reasonable rendition of the notes you have taken to help you continue to be able use those notes and build on them if, God-forbid, something happens to this site. The xml backup is something you can keep that will help me restore your data in case the data on the server is corrupted, but the site is still otherwise functional. At this point, any restoration of data problems will be manual, so please don't expect me to restore older versions of your data simply because you want to undo some of the changes you've made.

You can create a backup of your personal noteset by clicking on the Backup Noteset link in the Settings menu. From there, you will choose the type of backup you would like (text or xml) and then a backup will be sent to you via email to the address you registered with.