Faharas.net

From a Major Arabic Content Community to an AI Directory

The story of Faharas (فهرس): a training ground for Arabic writers that grew into a five-million-visit-a-month publisher, survived two shutdowns, and is now rebuilding as a directory of the AI ecosystem.

Faharas.net (فهرس) started in 2019 as an Arabic platform for well-researched content. The name itself — faharas — means "indexes" or "tables of contents" in Arabic, and that idea has shaped every version of the site since.

2019–2023: A content community, not a content farm

Faharas trained Arabic writers to publish articles built on strong SEO and real research, not just articles designed to rank. Every piece went through three stages: a writer drafted it, a supervisor reviewed it and sent back feedback, and a research and fact-checking specialist verified the sources before publication.

The site grew to more than 22 main categories — health, medicine, history, economics, sports, fashion, biographies, cooking, and more — each with subcategories underneath it.

At its peak, Faharas received at least 5 million visits a month, without ever operating as a commercial project. The goal was useful content and trained writers, not revenue.

2023–2024: The decline, and the first shutdown

Generative AI's rapid rise in March 2023 hit Faharas the way it hit most content sites. We tried to recover: rewriting old articles, cutting outdated pages, redesigning the site, publishing new material. Traffic kept falling anyway. We closed the site at the end of 2024 and let the domain sit unused for close to a year.

2025: The English news experiment

We rebuilt Faharas as an English-language news platform. RSS feeds surfaced stories, but nothing published automatically — a team of around 10 people researched, verified, rewrote, and edited every story before it went live.

We gave it about six months. It didn't work, for a simple reason: AI assistants had gotten fast and capable enough that most readers preferred a quick answer from a chatbot over a visit to a news site.

2026: Rebuilding around AI instead of against it

Today, 15 August 2026, Faharas restarts with a third direction — this time going back to what the name always meant: an index, a directory, a place where information is organized and easy to find. The new Faharas is built entirely around AI, not as a competitor to it.

Directories and databases

DirectoryWhat it covers
AI CompaniesLabs, startups, and vendors building AI products and infrastructure
AI ModelsFoundation models and specialized models, tracked by provider and capability
AI ToolsApps and services built on top of AI models
AI PromptsReusable prompts organized by use case
AI SkillsPackaged instructions and workflows that extend what an AI system can do
AI AgentsAutonomous and semi-autonomous systems built on AI models
Platforms and ServicesInfrastructure, APIs, and hosting for building on AI
Resources and LearningGuides, courses, and reference material for learning AI

Editorial side

Alongside the directories, Faharas will publish practical articles on AI agents, tools, workflows, and emerging developments, plus short news updates focused on what happened, why it matters, and what to do about it. The aim isn't another generic AI news feed — it's an organized map of the AI ecosystem that people can actually navigate.

What we learned

Publishing information stopped being enough. What still has value is organizing it, verifying it, and helping people find it — which is what the name Faharas (فهرس) meant from the start.

Faharas.net — An Index of AI.