Have you tried Character Map? It's a font utility included with WinXP that lets you view and copy all the characters within a font to clipboard.
In the screenshot below, I've got the Arial font selected, and scrolled down to where there are some arabic type faces. If you know which you need, all you've got to do is copy them and paste into Photoshop as a real scalable font. Using this utility could also help figure out some of the grainy smudges in the photos, or at least narrow the options down so a native speaker could more quickly figure it out.
