5  Amazing Apps for Students of Knowledge 

 Notion (Note-taking App)

Notion is an exceptional and innovative app with a fresh layout, containing a multitude of features. The most prominent of these features is the ability to create a customised database of your books and gather all your notes in one place. The books can be labelled according to the author, genre, publisher, etc., giving them an individual identity. 

I also have a box labelled ‘notes progress’, which is only ticked once I have finished a book, as I have a habit of starting a book and then moving on to something else without completing the former. 

Additionally, the app has bold, italicize, and underline features at hand. I recommend this app over other methods due to its easy accessibility. How often do we need source out something we’ve read, but our notes or books are somewhere on our bookshelf? Or worse, we can’t recall where we read it? This is where Notion comes in handy. It’s just a button away, and if you can’t remember where you read a topic, you can use the search feature on Notion to rummage through your notes database and locate it for you. 

Among its latest features is the sync feature, where you can connect discussions from different books in one place, thereby facilitating ease for research purposes. If you’re a teacher, it’s even more valuable, as Notion provides each user with an individual link. By sharing this link with your students, they can access your notes without being able to edit them. Apart from this, it can be used for many other purposes such as Jumuah lecture notes, Maktab expenditures, daily task lists, etc.

Al-Bāḥith al-Qurʾānī الباحث القرآني – 

Al-Bāḥith al-Qurʾānī is a brilliant app for tafsīr. By typing a few words of the Qurānic verse, a list of related verses shows up. This feature is extremely beneficial in locating an ayah one cannot fully recall, and also as a mutashābihāt aid. The app displays approximately 42 Tafāsīr on its homepage, categorized as امهات, معاصرة, لغة, منتقاة etc.

Furthermore, the app contains a plethora of dictionaries that are advantageous for understanding individual Qurānic vocabulary. Students who are just starting with Qurānic studies can profit from the app’s tarkeeb option. Anyone with an interest in the qira’āt can also benefit from the various مصاحف. Overall, this is an indispensable resource for anyone with a keen interest in the Qurʾānic sciences.

Turāth – تراث

An extensive reference-searching app. It contains thousands of books across different genres. Type in a few keywords, and the app will search its database to find what you’re looking for. Similar to a Google Search Bar, except it’s the Islamic version. Additionally, it has the Arabic PDF format available – the switch from searchable text to pdf taking a single click- so one does not have to rely on the digital version in case of any errors. There are also various options of refining your search results when using the search engine, such as searching the fiqh books of a specific madhhabs to locate a ruling, or searching through the books of a particular author or genre only.

E Masjid Live

A radio receiver for different Masājid across the country. It brings the discourses of erudite ulamā to your hand. It works similarly to YouTube, except that there are no troublesome ads to distract you and no videos. Many scholars/Imaams put their talks on this platform instead of Youtube making this invaluable.

V-Flat

Have you ever tried taking a picture from a page in a book and ended up with a shadow, an incomplete picture, or a blurry photo? V-Flat is there to fix that. It’s a scanning app that automatically handles all the bothers that come with taking a perfect picture of a book.

Honorable Mentions:

Islamic Library (an online library), Al-Mawsūʿah al-Ḥadīthiyyah الموسوعة الحديثية (a Ḥādīth grading app), Arabic Dictionaries.

– Compiled by Mawlana Ibrāhīm Qureshi