The company was founded and launched in 1998,[1][2] and was part of a large boom in Arab World use of e-commerce.

[3] The name Neelwafurat is a term referring to the Nile and Euphrates rivers (neel means "Nile", "wa" is a phonetic spelling of the specific letter waw, and furat means "Euphrates").

[citation needed] Neelwafurat's headquarters is located in Beirut, Lebanon.

[4] In 2004, the two best-selling novels on Neelwafurat were Cities of Salt by Abdul-Rahman Munif and The Insane Asylum by Ghazi al-Gosaibi, however both of these books were banned in Saudi Arabia.

[5] The web retailer is seen as a primary part of Lebanon's New Economy, and is a major outlet for independent publishers.