title: PHP Convert Windows-1256 encoded text to UTF-8
body: <p>I am getting Windows-1256 encoded text from the web and nee to convert it to utf-8.</p>
  
  <p>I tried using mb_convert_encoding and iconv but they don't seem to work.</p>
  
  <p>none of them seem to be capable of handling windows-1256.</p>
  
  <p>How to do it?</p>
  
  <p><strong>Edit:</strong> More details about the errors.
  When trying</p>
  
  <pre><code>mb_convert_encoding($text,"utf-8", "windows-1256");
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I get</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>Message: mb_convert_encoding() [function.mb-convert-encoding]: Illegal character encoding specified</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>And when i try </p>
  
  <pre><code>iconv("windows-1256", "utf-8", $text);
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I get no errors but it returns an empty string</p>