AMID a festive and delightful atmosphere, the Al-Ahram Establishment celebrated its 140th anniversary in a ceremony in its newsroom on Sunday. The ceremony was attended by Chairman of the Board Ahmed Sayed Al-Naggar, Al-Ahram's Editor-in-Chief Mohamed Abdel-Hadi, former chairman of the Press Syndicate Makram Mohamed Ahmed, former chairman of the board Morsi Attallah, and a large group of writers, researchers and journalists. “The celebration mounted by Al-Ahram on the occasion of its 140th birthday is something that would be difficult to repeat at any other newspaper in Egypt,” Al-Naggar said during the ceremony, pointing out that the newspaper had been able to maintain its continuity for 140 years. “We may agree or disagree with the political orientation of Al-Ahram newspaper at one moment or another, but no one can deny that during this period Al-Ahram has always been an Arab newspaper and a fortress of enlightenment and true values — things that we are greatly in need of today,” Al-Naggar added. The former head of the Press Syndicate congratulated Al-Ahram on its birthday and the newspaper's staff on a wonderful occasion that he hoped would happen again and again in the future. “I hope that future generations of will celebrate this occasion for the next 1,000 years,” Ahmed said. Al-Ahram was founded in Alexandria in 1875 by two Lebanese brothers, Beshara and Selim Takla. It began as a weekly newspaper published every Saturday, and its first issue appeared on 5 August 1876. The paper was re-launched as a daily newspaper in January 1881. Its headquarters were in Alexandria until November 1899 when the newspaper moved to Cairo. It was distributed in Egypt and the Levant, and following the death of Beshara Takla, Dawoud Barakat, a Lebanese journalist, was named editor of the daily in 1901. On 24 May 1960, the paper was nationalised when late president Gamal Abdel-Nasser passed a law eliminating the ownership of private newspapers in Egypt. “The exchange of experiences and the intermingling of the generations between older and newer journalists is the secret behind the success of Al-Ahram,” Abdel-Hadi said. “Today when we see those who have taught us our profession, we can say that this is the true value of Al-Ahram,” he added. (see p.13)
