Yaqub Sanu

Yaqub Sanu (1839-1912), also known as James Sanua, was an Egyptian Jew born to an Egyptian mother and an Italian father. He became famous as a journalist, an Egyptian nationalist and a playwright.

Partly educated in Livorno, Italy in the 1850s, Sanua became active as a journalist in Egypt, writing in a number of languages, of which, other than Arabic, the most important was French. He played an important role in the development of Egyptian theatre in the 1870s, both as a writer of original plays in Arabic and with his adaptations of French plays, but it was as a satirical nationalist journalist that he became famous in his day, a thorn in the side of both the Khedive and the British interlopers.

Early in 1877 Sanua founded the satirical magazine "Abou Naddara", which had an immediate appeal to both those who could read and those who had it read to them. It was quickly suppressed as being liberal and revolutionary, and its author banished. In March and April 1877 fifteen issues appeared, and of these no copies are known. Sanua went into exile on June 22, 1878 sailing on the ship Freycinet from Alexandria to Marseilles. Exile in France simply redoubled his journalistic efforts, and his celebrated journal, reproduced lithographically from handwriting in both Arabic and French, continued to appear, printed at a shop aptly located in the Passage du Caire in the second arrondissement. Like many such journals it frequently changed its name, although the title which remained most constant was "Rehlat Abou Naddara Zar'a" (Travels of the Man in the Blue Glasses from Egypt to Paris).

This was the first Arabic-language magazine to feature cartoons, the captions for these being given in French and Arabic, as well as being the first to use Egyptian Arabic - a language radically different from literary Arabic.

Its circulation was considerable in Egypt, where it was smuggled inside other larger newspapers (its format is small and each issue consisted only of two leaves.) There is clear evidence of its presence, even in the highest circles, in Egypt - and each issue may well have been printed in some 3300 copies. The magazine concentrated on both political and financial difficulties in Egypt, and Sanua probably had privy information from friends and well-wishers within the administration. Certainly his magazine was well-known: the Saturday Review in London printed in July 1879 a highly favourable notice, and many European memoirs of the period refer to it.

External links

* [http://www.sis.gov.eg/En/Tourism/Egyptintheireyes/Books/060301000000000001.htm Egypt State Information Service, review of Sherifa Zuhur, "Colors of Enchantment"] Yaqub in latin is Jacob not James

References