Al-Ahram's headquarters is in Boulaq, Cairo, its content is controlled by the Egyptian Ministry of Information, but despite this its opinion section is well regarded.
It has two foreign language versions, the English Al-Ahram Weekly (founded in 1991) and the French Al-Ahram Hebdo.
The newspaper was founded by two Syrian brothers Beshara and Saleem Teqla who were living at that time in Alexandria. In the beginning, Al-Ahram was published as a weekly newspaper on every Saturday..
The newspaper was distributed in Egypt and the Levant. Two months after the newspaper was founded, the Teqla brothers decided to make it a daily newspaper. In November 1899, Al-Ahram 's headquarters was moved to Cairo.
Some of the early writers in this newspaper were the religious scholars Muhammad Abduh and Jamal al-Din al-Afghani.