Es selaam,
Since my wife joined a famous online social network few months ago she has re-connected with nearly 200 family members all around the globe.
Her family can be traced back 36 generations but far from all branches of the family tree have been mapped. Especially not the female side of the extended family. The later generations got scattered across borders, a process that has intensified the past decades as life under the post colonial regimes pushed people out of their ancestral regions to find refuge and better opportunities around the globe.
My own family goes back to the Huguenots; French Protestants that were betrayed by the Catholics and who became refugees after the Night of Bartholomew massacre. Some ended up in The Netherlands. Others maybe England or South-Africa. There are links to the USA, Hungary and most certainly: Germany and Austria. It would be nice to hook that information up to Muslim part of the family.
I am looking for genealogy software, this is software used to visualize a family tree and maybe add documents, like old pictures or scans of documents to the archive.
There are a number of packets available and I wonder if someone has experience with them.
Because all the software bundles I have come across is aimed at a Western clientele I dare to question if they are flexible enough to work with mapping an extended family as known in non-Western cultures. Will the software e.g. have to option to add 'titles' given to those family members that are in Western culture not even considered part of the core nucleus (paternal) family? It would also be nice if there were an online version available so people can cooperate online to build the family tree.
If anyone has any experience with family tree software or web sites I like to hear about it.
Wes selaam,
Ibrahim
That seems to be a pretty specific category of software and I would guess that most users on here havent used such software.
Do you have any particular software packages that you are considering?
"For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens 'as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone'" - David Cameron, UK Prime Minister. 13 May 2015.
Selaam You.
I consider the subject of family tree making relevant for this forum because family is in the core of the Muslim culture and many of us have extended families nowadays in different parts of the world.
I also think keeping track of family history has its benefit to keep the mind sharp, see the present from an other angle etc. The little I know for example about my own family history (in relation to various wars in Europe) has significantly influenced me. Not only it showed that nationality, country and such are very relative in the big scheme of history. I refused to be drafted; fought wars at the factory gates for better working conditions and in the street against the military-industrial complex and its servants and in the end... elhamdullilah I converted to Islam. Yes, most certainly for Muslims who have as a community go through a lot the last centuries it is good to know their own family history.
I found a table that compares a number of family tree software:
http://www.my-history.co.uk/acatalog/softwarecomparisonMH/compare_15.html
The "Family Tree Maker" sets are related to the web site Ancestry.co.uk
That is one of the main gyneology web sites. The free trial is however only for their web site. Looks like a great resource if you have ancestors in the UK and USA. Useless in our case and very expensive to keep up with.
Installed "Family Historian" as a free 30 days trial. Could be downloaded without having to give your credit card details in advance. Just started to make a chart in it. Nice but as expected it has limitations due to its focus on a Western family.
The titles for family members are e.g. limited to the obvious ones: "mother", "father", ... The program is not flexible enough to work with titles like "bey", "ata", "dada", "kaka", "deyke", ....
How to implement the different wives in polygamous marriages and their descendants will be difficult or impossible. I still have to look further into the program. Find out e.g. if place names in German, French, Arabic, Kurdish and Farsi can be added or whether the program is stuck with using the Latin alphabet only. It looks like a nice program and the results can be brought online too, but most likely it will not suit a Muslim family mapping its origins.
I am sure some people have the right tools to track who is in contact with who and such but I have not come across software useful to make an extended family tree the modern way.
Ibrahim
Have a look at opensource if it can provide something.
I see that there is http://gramps-project.org/ and there is also phpgedview but that needs to be installed on a webserver (which can also be done on your PC via wampserver).
I'd always try opensource before I look at other freeware options.
There is more listed on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Free_genealogy_software
"For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens 'as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone'" - David Cameron, UK Prime Minister. 13 May 2015.
I'm also interested in this but guys on here think that ancestry doesn’t matter
My English is not very good
Please don't speak on behalf of the rest of us.
"How many people find fault in what they're reading and the fault is in their own understanding" Al Mutanabbi
OK
But we have had a discussion about this
Ancestry doesn’t matter
My English is not very good
Saying it doesn't affect your belief is different to being simply interested in it.
"How many people find fault in what they're reading and the fault is in their own understanding" Al Mutanabbi