Al Arab was the first Arabic daily following the independence of Qatar. It was printed between 1972 and 1995 and was relaunched on 18 November 2007 as an e-newspaper which is based in Doha, Qatar.
Al Arab was established in 1972. The paper was first published on 6 March 1972 as a weekly tabloid and became Qatar's first post-independence Arabic publication. The paper is also the first political paper of the country.
The founder and the first editor-in-chief of the daily was Qatari intellectual Abdullah Hussein Nemma, known as "Dean" of the Qatari press. The publisher was Dar Al Orouba. Al Arab was converted into a broadsheet daily on 22 February 1974. It was closed down in 1995. The license of the paper was sold by Nemma's family to the Minister of Foreign Affairs Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani in the 1990s.
