Page 271 - ZANUA-3

Yacoub Sanua, the man and the legend
Sanua, who lived between 1839-1912, has been in recent years the subject of much research in
Egypt. To the credit of most scholars, it should be said that they do not hide the origin of their
subject - a Jewish Egyptian journalist, a satirist, a playwright, an actor, a director, a great
conférencier and the man who renewed the language of Arabic literature.
In 2001, however, a researcher in Egypt tried to challenge the myth of Yacoub Sanua as the
'Father of Egyptian theater' which created a wide-ranging controversy. All the other scholars in
Egypt and all over the world rejected this claim outright and testified to Yacoub Sanua as the
pioneer of Egyptian theater.
The Egyptian researcher Dr. Ibrahim Abdu even dedicates his great book to the Abu Naddara
newspapers, Yacoub Sanua, and does not cease to praise him as the initiator of the National
movement in Egypt.
Prof. Sasson Somekh notes in his writings “In today's Egypt, historians still attest to Sanua as
th
one of the great and first stimuli of Egyptian National awareness. Until the 70s' of the 19
century, Egyptian youth was 'dormant' on the subject of Egyptian Nationalism. Only then a
generation of educated people emerged, such as Mohamad 'Abdu, the great religious reformer
for modern Islam, and Saad Zaghloul, the father of the Egyptian National movement. However
before those prominent figures, and together with them later, Yacoub Sanua was the instigator
of the National movement in Egypt, a real Egyptian nationalist, a native of Egypt himself,
unlike other pan-Arabists who came to Egypt from other Arab countries" concludes Prof.
Somekh.
Inspired by the character of Yacoub Sanua, the Israeli writer Shimon Ballas built the main
character of his book 'Solo' (1998, Hapoalim Library) on Sanua’s persona. "Yacoub Sanua was
one of the enlightened figures in Egypt who came out of Egyptian Jewry," says the writer
Shimon Ballas, an Israeli born in Baghdad. "He made a great contribution to his country and is
rightly considered the father of the Egyptian theater and father of the Egyptian satirical press.
Studies on his personality and work in the field of theater and the press have been published
"
and continue to be published in Arabic and other languages .
In an interview with Yacoub Sanua, published in July 1879 in the British Saturday Review, the
English journalist describes his interlocutor: "He has a blackish beauty typical of the Jewish
race, his eyes swollen because of an inherited eyes disease, but a flame burns in them, as seen
in the eyes of Baron James de Rothschild. In any case, this is the only feature they have in
common, since Sanua is not obsessed with matters of money." The French newspaper Le
Monde at the time describes him as a multicultural scholar, proficient in 12 languages and a
forerunner of the modern Arabic literature language.
In Syria, a group of Syrian filmmakers set up a website in the name of 'Abu Naddara' as a
tribute to the newspaper of the Yacoub Sanua. One can watch some of the group's films at
www.abounaddara.com
269
You are the Molière of Egypt, and so you will be called forever." Indeed, this is how Sanua
used to sign, until the end of his life, the 'Molière of Egypt'.
There was not far to go for Sanua to extend to a satirical critique against foreigners in Egypt,
especially the British. The inevitable clash occurred when Yacoub Sanua infiltrated in his plays,
hints of criticism on the ruler Ismaïl - the spendthrift Khedive, who put Egypt in the swamp of
huge debts and mortgaged Egypt to foreigners in exchange for loans. The Khedive's British
advisers pointed out that the playwright was inciting against him. In other plays he preached
against corruption, greed and eagerness for easy profits, or mocked foreigners who came to
swallow the best of Egypt and capture it in their snare, the British first and foremost.
In 1872, when Sanua staged his satirical play "Homeland and Liberty," in which he criticized
the corruption of the regime, the ruler Ismaïl was furious and closed the theater to Yacoub
Sanua's troupe. From that time, Sanua stopped writing plays.
The satirical newspaper 'Abu Naddara' by Yacoub Sanua:
But a satirist on the scale of Yacoub Sanua, whose nationalism was burning in his bones for the
liberation of Egypt from the British yoke, turned his full energy and creativity to the
establishment of the first satirical newspaper of its kind in Egypt called 'Abu Naddara' ةراظن وبأ
(The man with the glasses), matching with his pen name 'Sheikh Abu Naddara', as he was
always wearing thick glasses.
He soon joined with Gamal e-Din el-Afghani, a Muslim preacher who came to Egypt in 1871
from Afghanistan, to preach for pan-arabism and against the intrusion of imperialism from the
West, especially Britain, into the territories of the Ottoman Empire. Although the Egyptian
people at the time were proud of their Pharaonic origins and a large part of them did not see
themselves as 'Arab people', el-Afghani managed to gather around him talented young people
of all religions, founding for the first time in Egypt a pan-Islamic Association. Among the
prominent activists in the association during the 1870s, Yacoub Sanua and Muhamad Abdu -
the religious reformer who worked for the modernism of Islam. Later, Saad Zaghloul, the first
leader of the Wafd party, also joined the Egyptian national movement that led the struggle for
Egyptian independence from the British occupation, without the pan-Islamism – the way
Yacoub Sanua had opted for too.
As early as 1872, Sanua founded two scientific clubs, the 'Progress Club' and the 'Science
Lovers Club' and was elected to head them. In 1874 he went to Europe for a long stay, to
explore the ways of European governments, European society and the people who lived there.
Immediately upon his return to Egypt, Sanua founded his satirical newspaper Abu-Naddara,
which was widely circulated and widely publicized. 'Abu Naddara' was indeed the first Arabic-
language newspaper to incorporate cartoons and the first to be written in spoken (non-literary)
Egyptian Arabic, which Sanua used in his plays. This made for the newspaper's uniqueness:
popular and satirical.
272