The man behind UAE's first newspaper

The UAE and Arab press has lost one of its pioneers, Taryam Omran Taryam who passed away yesterday after over 30 years of serving UAE society and the Arab world.

Born in Sharjah, 1942, Taryam finished his secondary education in Sharjah and continued his higher education in sociology at Cairo University. During a politically active Egypt, Taryam was involved in the student movement at the university, which he participated in creating.

Following graduation, he effectively was involved, with others, in laying the foundation to what later came to be the UAE. He was then appointed in 1971 as the first UAE Ambassador to Egypt.

Taryam later became also the first UAE Representative at the Arab League. From 1977 to 1981, he presided over the UAE Federal National Council for two successive legislative sessions and between 1978 and 1979, he was designated as President of the Arab Parliamentarian Union.

Besides his political designations, Taryam was deeply involved in cultural activities as he carried great affection for the field. He was a member of the secretariat general of the Sultan Al Owais Cultural Foundation and of the Centre for Arab Unity Studies.

He was also vice president of the UAE commission of the Arab solidarity and member of the Gulf Development Forum, as well as many other Arab and international organisations.

But the main area to which Taryam has devoted most of his life has been the press. In 1970, he founded, along with his brother Abdullah, Dar Al Khaleej for printing and publishing.

The newspaper Al Khaleej was the first Arabic daily in the UAE. Because of a lack of modern printing facilities, the paper in the beginning was published in Kuwait and shipped by airplanes to the UAE. Publication commenced in Sharjah in 1980 when the publishing house had adequate publishing facilities. In addition to the newspaper, Dar Al Khaleej also issued the magazine Al Shrooq.

Taryam realised the important role played by the press. The press in the UAE, Taryam said in an interview, began in the 1950s and the 1960s. Before that period, the country lived isolated from the rest of the world by geographical means: the sea from one side and the desert from the other.

The precursor to the press, Taryam said, was the development of education in the country in the early fifties, as education is tightly correlated with the spreading of information.

With the beginning of the sixties, the Arabian Gulf region was witnessing great changes and the Arab world was experiencing tremendous transformation, which altogether favoured the creation of newspapers and magazines.

"At its creation the newspaper (Al Khaleej) was prepared in our offices in Sharjah and published in Kuwait, the newspaper was then shipped by plane on daily basis. We faced many logistical and financial problems at the beginning, but we persevered and our efforts were finally rewarded," Taryam had elaborated.