Yaqub Sanu

Yaqub Sanu

Yaqub Sanu (Arabic: يعقوب صنوع‎‎ yaʿqūb ṣannūʿ, also known as James Sanua, Arabic: چمس سانووا‎‎, January 9, 1839 Cairo – 1912 Paris), was an Egyptian Jewish journalist, nationalist activist and playwright. He was also a polyglot, writing in French, English, Turkish, Persian, Hebrew, and Italian as well as both literary Arabic and Egyptian Arabic.

Sanu was an Egyptian Jew born to an Egyptian Jewish family. His father worked for Prince Yaken the grandson of Muhammad Ali Pasha, Khedive of Egypt and Sudan. When Yaqub was thirteen he wrote an Arabic poem and recited it in front of the prince who was fascinated by the young boy's talents. The prince later sent him to be educated in Livorno, Italy in 1853, where he studied Arts and Literature. When he returned to Egypt in 1855 he worked as a tutor for the prince children before he became a teacher in the Arts and Crafts School in Cairo.

Sanua became active as a journalist in Egypt, writing in a number of languages including Arabic and 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.

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