[6] The newspaper had offices in London, Paris, Washington, New York, Moscow, Riyadh, Jeddah, Beirut, Cairo, Baghdad, Dubai, Amman, and Damascus, among others.

[8] The newspaper's motto was "Life is belief and struggle" (Arabic: إن الحياة عقيدة وجهاد), a line taken from a poem by Egyptian poet Ahmed Shawki.

[13] "Its ownership by Prince Khalid has meant that the paper treads softly when it comes to disquieting news about Saudi Arabia, a notable exception to its independent stand," according to a 1997 article in The New York Times.

[citation needed] In January 1997, at least 14 letter bombs were mailed to the newspaper's headquarters in London and its bureaus in New York, Washington and Riyadh.

[15] The publication was part of an exchange between American intellectuals—including Samuel P. Huntington, Francis Fukuyama, and Daniel Patrick Moynihan—and counterparts in the Europe and the Middle East over the moral foundation for the Bush administration's war against terrorism, with the first letter entitled "What We're Fighting For" published in February 2002 during the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan.

[15] A group of 153 largely conservative and Wahhabi Saudi scholars had responded in May 2002, in a column entitled "How We Can Coexist," arguing that while Islam does indeed forbid violence against innocent civilians, the root cause of the 11 September attacks was unjust American foreign policy.

[3] The ban was a culmination of weeks of extended tension between the newspaper and the Saudi information ministry, which the paper's staff alleged to have ordered Al-Hayat to drop columnist Abdul Aziz Suwaid,[16] who had written a number of columns criticizing the government for inefficiencies, including a wave of mysterious deaths among camel populations.

[3] Other reports attributed the ban to the paper's disclosure that a Saudi extremist had played a key role in an Iraqi al-Qa'ida front group.

[5][4] Some Middle East watchers speculated that Al-Hayat's financial difficulties stemmed from the pressure campaign that Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, was waging on his potential rivals.

[3][24] Additionally, Hassan Haidar served as managing editors in Britain, Zouheir Qoseibati in Lebanon, Raja Rassi as director general and Gilbert Mayni as finance controller.

Although Al Hayat was headquartered in London—the principal location for its editorial, administrative, distribution, and subscriptions offices—the paper also maintained offices in Paris, Washington, DC, New York City, Moscow, Riyadh, Jeddah, Dammam, Beirut, Cairo, Baghdad, and Damascus.

[6] The three offices in Saudi Arabia reflected the paper's focus on the country as well as the regional division into central (Riyadh), west (Jeddah), and eastern (Dammam) editions.

Among them are Hazem Saghieh, Abdulwahab Badraghan, Zouhair Koussaibati, Hassan Haidar, Raghida Dargham, Randa Takieddine, Walid Choucair, Salim Nassar, Abdel-Rahman Ayas, Khalid al-Dakhil, a political sociologist and writer, Jamal Khashoggi, who used to be the editor-in-chief of another Saudi paper, Al Watan.

Jihad Al Khazen, who was also the founding editor in chief of the rival pan-Arab newspaper Asharq Alawsat,[25] writes a twice weekly column called "Ayoon wa Azan" (Arabic: عيون وآذان "Eyes and Ears") featured on the back page.

[26] Al-Hayat was established by its founder Kamel Mroueh in Beirut on 28 January 1946 as an independent international Arabic daily political newspaper.

It collects news through a network of correspondents worldwide and is printed in Arab and Western cities linked by satellite to the London offices.