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Yacoub Sanua, the man and the legend 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'.
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 There was not far to go for Sanua to extend to a satirical critique against foreigners in Egypt,

subject - a Jewish Egyptian journalist, a satirist, a playwright, an actor, a director, a great especially the British. The inevitable clash occurred when Yacoub Sanua infiltrated in his plays,
conférencier and the man who renewed the language of Arabic literature. 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
In 2001, however, a researcher in Egypt tried to challenge the myth of Yacoub Sanua as the advisers pointed out that the playwright was inciting against him. In other plays he preached
'Father of Egyptian theater' which created a wide-ranging controversy. All the other scholars in against corruption, greed and eagerness for easy profits, or mocked foreigners who came to
Egypt and all over the world rejected this claim outright and testified to Yacoub Sanua as the swallow the best of Egypt and capture it in their snare, the British first and foremost.
pioneer of Egyptian theater.

In 1872, when Sanua staged his satirical play "Homeland and Liberty," in which he criticized
The Egyptian researcher Dr. Ibrahim Abdu even dedicates his great book to the Abu Naddara the corruption of the regime, the ruler Ismaïl was furious and closed the theater to Yacoub
newspapers, Yacoub Sanua, and does not cease to praise him as the initiator of the National Sanua's troupe. From that time, Sanua stopped writing plays.

movement in Egypt.
The satirical newspaper 'Abu Naddara' by Yacoub Sanua:
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 But a satirist on the scale of Yacoub Sanua, whose nationalism was burning in his bones for the
century, Egyptian youth was 'dormant' on the subject of Egyptian Nationalism. Only then a liberation of Egypt from the British yoke, turned his full energy and creativity to the
generation of educated people emerged, such as Mohamad 'Abdu, the great religious reformer establishment of the first satirical newspaper of its kind in Egypt called 'Abu Naddara' ةراظن وبأ

for modern Islam, and Saad Zaghloul, the father of the Egyptian National movement. However (The man with the glasses), matching with his pen name 'Sheikh Abu Naddara', as he was
before those prominent figures, and together with them later, Yacoub Sanua was the instigator always wearing thick glasses.
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. He soon joined with Gamal e-Din el-Afghani, a Muslim preacher who came to Egypt in 1871

Somekh. 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
Inspired by the character of Yacoub Sanua, the Israeli writer Shimon Ballas built the main people at the time were proud of their Pharaonic origins and a large part of them did not see
character of his book 'Solo' (1998, Hapoalim Library) on Sanua’s persona. "Yacoub Sanua was themselves as 'Arab people', el-Afghani managed to gather around him talented young people

one of the enlightened figures in Egypt who came out of Egyptian Jewry," says the writer of all religions, founding for the first time in Egypt a pan-Islamic Association. Among the
Shimon Ballas, an Israeli born in Baghdad. "He made a great contribution to his country and is prominent activists in the association during the 1870s, Yacoub Sanua and Muhamad Abdu -

rightly considered the father of the Egyptian theater and father of the Egyptian satirical press. the religious reformer who worked for the modernism of Islam. Later, Saad Zaghloul, the first
Studies on his personality and work in the field of theater and the press have been published leader of the Wafd party, also joined the Egyptian national movement that led the struggle for
"
and continue to be published in Arabic and other languages . Egyptian independence from the British occupation, without the pan-Islamism – the way
Yacoub Sanua had opted for too.
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 As early as 1872, Sanua founded two scientific clubs, the 'Progress Club' and the 'Science
race, his eyes swollen because of an inherited eyes disease, but a flame burns in them, as seen Lovers Club' and was elected to head them. In 1874 he went to Europe for a long stay, to

in the eyes of Baron James de Rothschild. In any case, this is the only feature they have in explore the ways of European governments, European society and the people who lived there.
common, since Sanua is not obsessed with matters of money." The French newspaper Le Immediately upon his return to Egypt, Sanua founded his satirical newspaper Abu-Naddara,
Monde at the time describes him as a multicultural scholar, proficient in 12 languages and a which was widely circulated and widely publicized. 'Abu Naddara' was indeed the first Arabic-

forerunner of the modern Arabic literature language. 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:
In Syria, a group of Syrian filmmakers set up a website in the name of 'Abu Naddara' as a popular and satirical.

tribute to the newspaper of the Yacoub Sanua. One can watch some of the group's films at
www.abounaddara.com

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