Learning to play the oud

I've had several brushes with music, as all of my family play something, apart from me. However, I never had lessons until I got started with my oud in May 2011. My biggest challenge is that I chose to learn the oud in Arabic, and using Arabic music notation and system, with an oud teacher who was classically trained in Baghdad. Therefore, all of my passing knowledge of western music, was now not directly useful, or getting in the way.

I was lucky enough that I was able to find an Arabic book on music theory and practice (got it from the shop in Cairo where my first oud came from), and I later found copies of Jamil Bashir books on the internet, which are used to instruct music scholars in the Institute of Fine Arts in Baghdad - Iraq.

A particularly useful, and amazingly thorough resource, in the theory of Arabic music, is the Maqam World website. It is extremely well put together, and it would be great to see it published into a book.