diff --git a/ChangeLog b/ChangeLog
index a4657a2fe4..0d4fd18522 100644
--- a/ChangeLog
+++ b/ChangeLog
@@ -37,6 +37,7 @@ phpMyAdmin - ChangeLog
 - issue #11784 Properly handle errors in upacking zip archive
 - issue #11785 Set PHP's internal encoding to UTF-8
 - issue #11786 Fixed Kanji encoding in some specific cases
+- issue #11787 Check whether iconv works before using it
 
 4.5.3.1 (2015-12-25)
 - issue #11774 Undefined offset 2
diff --git a/libraries/charset_conversion.lib.php b/libraries/charset_conversion.lib.php
index e3dd9a40ab..5d2e076a1b 100644
--- a/libraries/charset_conversion.lib.php
+++ b/libraries/charset_conversion.lib.php
@@ -41,7 +41,13 @@ if ($GLOBALS['cfg']['RecodingEngine'] == 'iconv') {
         PMA_warnMissingExtension('mbstring');
     }
 } elseif ($GLOBALS['cfg']['RecodingEngine'] == 'auto') {
-    if (@function_exists('iconv')) {
+    /*
+     * We also need to verify iconv works, see
+     * https://github.com/phpmyadmin/phpmyadmin/issues/11787/
+     * and
+     * https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=44096
+     */
+    if (@function_exists('iconv') && @iconv_strlen('', 'cp1250') !== false) {
         $PMA_recoding_engine = PMA_getIconvRecodingEngine();
     } elseif (@function_exists('recode_string')) {
         $PMA_recoding_engine = PMA_CHARSET_RECODE;