Yaqub Sanu

 ( 1839 Births ) 

Sanu and the Khedive had a falling out in 1876 when Egypt's bankruptcy led Ismail to withdraw his support. Sanu mercilessly caricatured both Ismail the Magnificent and Egypt's British rulers as bumbling buffoons in his journalism and especially in his cartoons. He was also the first journalist to write in Egyptian Arabic, which was intended to appeal to a mass audience, and his cartoons could be easily understood by even the illiterate.

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 3,300 copies. The magazine concentrated on both political and financial difficulties in Egypt, and Sanua was probably privy to this 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.

Sanu from 1882 onward drew cartoons which depicted the British as "red locusts" devouring all of Egypt's wealth, leaving nothing behind for the Egyptians. At other times, the British occupying Egypt were simply labelled "the reds" – a reference to the red sun-burned faces of British officials and soldiers in Egypt, which Sanu lampooned by giving every British person in Egypt a face that was grotesquely burned red. A recurring theme of Sanu's humor was the inability of the British characters in his cartoons to properly speak French. The witty dialogue he gave his cartoon characters was highly lauded in 19th century France as Sanu made his British cartoon characters mangle the French language. His Egyptian characters, however, spoke the most correct French, which was intended to show the supposed moral and cultural superiority of the occupied over the occupiers. Like most other educated Egyptians in the 19th century, he believed France was the ideal role model for Egypt.

Sanu became a celebrity in France, and he played up his status as an exotic "Orientalism" by taking off his usual European clothing and donning the traditional Egyptian "Jellabiya" and turban for photographs and when delivering his lectures; he believed that his credibility as an expert on Egypt relied on this exotic appeal. Sanu was such a celebrity in France that when a small fire broke out in his apartment in Paris, it was covered by the major French newspapers as important news. An article in Le Courrier de France in September 1895 reported that Sannu had "become such an in-demand conference presenter that no week passes by without the press documenting one of his many conference presentations." A man with a high opinion of himself, Sanu obsessively recorded all of the mentions of his name by the media.

Through banned in Egypt, Abu-Naddara Zarqa was a very popular underground newspaper, with Sanu's cartoons being especially popular. Other cartoons drawn by Sanu with captions in Arabic and French depicted La Vieux Albion (England) as a hideous hag together with her even more repulsive son John Bull, who was always shown as an ignorant, uncouth and drunken bully pushing around ordinary Egyptians. Sanu's Egyptian nationalism was based on loyalty to Egypt as a state and geographic entity rather than a sense of Arab Nationalism or Pan-Islamism, as he presented Egypt as a tolerant place where Muslims, Christians and Jews were all united by a common love of al-watan ("the homeland"). To counter the claim made by British officials like Lord Cromer, who justified the British occupation of Egypt as necessary to protect Egypt's Jewish and Christian minorities from the Muslim majority, Sanu wrote that as an Egyptian Jew he did not feel threatened by the Muslim majority, saying in a speech in Paris: "The Quran is not a book of fanaticism, superstition or barbarity."

A Francophile, Sanu's writings often glorified France, with one poem he wrote in French reading:

"We adore you, oh children of France — champions of liberty You inspire our confidence — with your historic loyalty If the French treat us like brothers — the brutal English treat us like dogs The one makes us happy and prosperous — the other, steals our goods The English pillage our fertile fields — taking away the fruits of our labor The French enrich our cities — civilize and educate us".

Keen to win French support, Sanu, who was critical of British imperialism in Egypt, never criticized French imperialism in Tunisia, Morocco or Algeria. After France concluded an alliance with Russia in 1894, Sanu drew a cartoon with the title " Les amis de nos amis sont nos amis" ("The Friends of Our Friends Are Our Friends") who showed an Egyptian, an British Raj, and an Qajar Iran all cheering a French sailor and a Russian sailor marching down a street as their friends while a thuggish-looking John Bull looks on in disapproval.

In 1961, the American historian Irene Gendzier argued that Sanu, whose first language was Arabic and who was proud to be both an Egyptian and a Jew, could serve as a symbol of reconciliation between Egyptians and Jews.