[1][3][4] The font was developed by the founder of the Lebanese daily newspaper Al-Hayat Kamel Mrowa, its lettering artist Nabih Jaroudi, and Linotype & Machinery Ltd. staff under the guidance of Walter Tracy.

[1] In 1954, Kamel Mrowa contacted the British company Linotype & Machinery Ltd. (L&M), formed by the merger of the Linotype Company Limited (registered in 1889) and the Machinery Trust Limited (registered in 1893),[6] with the idea of developing a new, simplified Arabic typeface.

[1] Kamel Mrowa, the lettering artist of Al-Hayat Nabih Jaroudi, and staff of Linotype & Machinery Ltd. under the leadership and guidance of Walter Tracy collaborated on the project.

[7] Hrant Gabeyah suggested the name Yakout, after the 13th century calligrapher Yaqut al-Musta'simi.

[5] Simplified Arabic, in barely modified forms, was then used as the Arabic complement for both Times New Roman and Arial, which were then included as TrueType fonts for the core fonts for the Web World Wide Web.