Al Nadwa was founded in 1958 in Mecca. The founder of the paper is Ahmad Al Subaii. In fact, Al Nadwa incorporated with another paper, Hera, under its current name. The publisher of the paper was Makkah Printing and Information Establishment. Abdulaziz bin Mohieddin Khoja is the chairman of the general assembly of Makkah Establishment for Publishing and Printing. Its editor-in-chief was Ahmad bin Saleh. In 2003, the paper experienced serious financial difficulty. In February 2013, it was closed down due to unpaid financial dues. The paper was considered as pro-government. It was further described as a religiously conservative daily. The estimated circulation of the paper at the beginning of the 1990s was between 25,000 and 30,000 copies. Its 2003 circulation was 30,000 copies. Although the paper had no high circulation levels, it enjoyed a special status as a result of being Mecca's hometown paper and of having good editorial writings. The U.S. diplomatic cables also indicated that small circulation of the paper made it difficult to see its influence.
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The U.S. diplomatic cables reported that Al Nadwa was the only paper condemned the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990 before the Saudi government displayed a clear official position concerning this event. Additionally, in the 1990s, a series of articles, criticising extremist views, was published in the paper. The target of these criticisms were initially non-Saudi Islamic figures such as Sudanese Hasan Al Turabi. However, later the paper began to criticise Safar Al Hawali and Ayidh Al Qarni. The criticism against these two Saudi Islamic figures led to public anger. As a result, columnist Yousuf Damanhouri was removed from the paper's board of editors. The paper, unlike many other Saudi daily papers, also reported the incident of fire in girls' school in Mecca in 2002, killing fifteen female students as a result of the muttawa's curtailing the attempts of rescue workers. Furthermore, then-editor-in-chief of the paper, Abdul Rahman Saad Alorabi, employed women reporters to interview with the women in the family of victims and surviving female students. The paper openly reported the negative physical conditions experienced in Mecca. For instance, it reported in 2007 that although Al Bayary, an old street, is in close proximity to Masjid Al Haram, it seriously suffers from lack of electricity and water facilities as well as sewerage problems.
