Al-Ahram (Arabic: الأهرام; The Pyramids), founded in 1875, is the most widely circulating Egyptian daily newspaper, and the second oldest after al-Waqa´i`al-Masriya (The Egyptian Events, founded 1828). It is majority owned by the Egyptian government.
Given the large dialectal variety of the Arabic language, Al-Ahram is widely considered an influential source of writing style in Arabic. In 1950, the Middle East Institute described Al-Ahram as being to the Arabic-reading public within its area of distribution, "What The Times is to Englishmen and the New York Times to Americans", however it has often been accused of heavy influence and censorship by the Egyptian government.
In addition to the main edition published in Egypt, the paper publishes two other Arabic-language editions, one geared to the Arab World and the other aimed at an international audience, as well as editions in English and French.
History
Al-Ahram was founded in Alexandria in 1875 by two Lebanese brothers, Beshara Takla and Saleem Takla. It began as a weekly newspaper published every Saturday. Its first issue appeared on 5 August 1876.The paper was relaunched as a daily newspaper in January 1881.
Its headquarters was in Alexandria until November 1899 when it was moved to Cairo.The newspaper was distributed in Egypt and the Levant. The religious innovators Muhammad Abduh and Jamal al-Din al-Afghani were early writers of the newspaper. Upon the death of Beshara Takla, Daud Barakat, a Lebanese journalist, was named editor of the daily in 1901.
On 24 May 1960, the paper was nationalized when President Gamal Abdel Nasser passed a law eliminating the ownership of private newspapers.
The circulation of the paper was between 45,000 and 50,000 copies in 1937 whereas it was 90,000 copies in 1947.In 1976 the paper had a circulation of 520,000 copies, making it the second most read daily in Egypt after Al Akhbar.Al Ahram´s circulation in 2000 was 1.2 million copies