Abstract
Among the Egyptian periodicals published at the end of the nineteenth century, there was no such thing as an Arabic Punch. It was only in 1907, decades after the period at stake in this chapter, that a ‘Punch proper’, the al-Siyâsa al-Musawwara or The Cairo Punch, made its appearance and was eventually followed, in the 1920s, by a massive flow of satirical magazines. The absence of an Egyptian Punch version before the onset of the twentieth century, however, does not mean that there was no satirical press in Egypt, nor does it preclude an awareness of Punch and other European satirical periodicals in this country. The present chapter focuses on the late nineteenth century and reconstructs the somewhat complex and multi-layered story of how the Egyptian satirical press came into being. It deals, more specifically, with the first satirical journal in Egypt, Yaʿqūb Sannūʿ alias James Sanua’s Abū Nazzāra Zarqā (1878–1911). Sanua was essentially a dramatist, and tracing this history requires indeed close attention to the nineteenth century Egyptian theatre in order to capture, as this chapter will, the accommodation of drama in satirical journalism. The question of the British Punch’s (in this case mostly tacit) presence shall also be heeded and will be taken up summarily in the conclusion.
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Notes
- 1.
For this Cairo Punch, see the contribution by Marilyn Booth, chapter What’s in a Name? Branding Punch in Cairo, 1908 in this volume.
- 2.
Such as Rūz al-Yūsuf, al-Kashkūl and Khayāl az-Zill; all of these were illustrated with the most colourful caricatures.
- 3.
In order to make the reading more fluent, the name’s transcription offered by Sannūʿ himself—namely ‘James Sanua’—is used in the following. The same applies to all Arabic authors’ names who published in English or in French.
- 4.
The transliteration is kept as near as possible to Sanua’s original text in Egyptian colloquial Arabic (ʿammiyya).
- 5.
When referring to the journal, Sanua’s French transliteration for the title is used.
- 6.
Abū Nazzāra Zarqā, 21 Rabīʿ al-awwal 1295/25 March 1878, 1–4.
- 7.
See chapter The Presence of Punch in the Nineteenth Century in this volume.
- 8.
Ibid.
- 9.
The titles of the handwritten lithographs varied slightly. The common element from the first to the last issue is: ‘Abū Nazzāra’s Journey from Egypt to Paris’. The adjectives attributed to both places and Sanua’s professions or self-definitions changed over time. Starting from the eighth issue, the title included its number (out of 30), the price and the form of payment. Hereafter we refer to ‘Abū Nazzāra’s Journey’ as the Rihla (journey).
- 10.
First published in Cairo in 1834. Louca’s French translation: Rifâʿa At-tahtâwî, L’or de Paris, trans. Anouar Louca (Paris: Sindbad, 1988).
- 11.
As only a scarce number of Pashas were enthusiastic and regular theater-goers, the Khedive made it obligatory for some of his dignitaries to purchase seasonal tickets. See Philip C. Sadgrove, The Egyptian Theatre in the Nineteenth Century 1799–1882 (Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2007).
- 12.
Landau disputes that, with the forced emigration of many of the Syrian actors and playwrights to Egypt, the drama culture in Beirut had come to an uneasy interruption, and quotes different travellers and chroniclers who have reported the continuity of the development of drama in that town. See Jacob M. Landau et al., Études sur le théâtre et le cinéma arabes (Paris: G.-P. Maisonneuve et Larose, 1965), 63–65.
- 13.
Sadgrove, Egyptian Theatre, 97.
- 14.
Mahmoud Manzalaoui, ed., Arabic Writing Today 2: Drama, American Research Center in Egypt, Cairo, 1977, 20.
- 15.
Landau, Études sur le théâtre.
- 16.
Edward W. Lane, An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians: The Definitive 1860 Edition (Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2003), 390.
- 17.
Landau, Études sur le théâtre, 36–37.
- 18.
See chapter Teodor Kasab’s Ottoman Adaptation of the Ottoman Shadow Theatre Karagöz in this volume.
- 19.
“An Arabic Punch,” The Saturday Review, July 26, 1879, 112.
- 20.
This date is the one quoted in his Ma vie en vers et mon théâtre en prose. There he writes that he was born in April 1939, maybe also due to a Reimzwang, in order to make it rhyme with ‘Nil’. James Sanua, Ma vie en prose et mon théâtre en vers (Paris: Imprimérie Montgeronnaise, n.d.)) His biographers insist on the ninth of December as his true date of birth. See Irene L. Gendzier, The Practical Visions of Ya’qub Sanu’, publ. Centre for Middle Eastern Studies (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966); Ibrāhīm ʿAbduh, Abū Nazzāra (Cairo, 1953).
- 21.
Khedive Ismaʿil’s brother.
- 22.
Jacques Chelley, “Le Molière Egyptien,” Abou Naddara 6, 1 August 1906 (my translation).
- 23.
James Sanua, “Mémoires” [unpublished], courtesy of Mrs Eva Milhaud.
- 24.
Ibid.
- 25.
Sanua reports his leaving Egypt as a personal decision for the sake of his physical integrity. Aboard the steamboat ‘Freicynet’, he spent, according to the seventh issue of the Rihla, his time among the passengers of the first and the second class, playing the flute for the ladies. See Rihla 7, 22. September (Aylūl) 1878. A very different picture of a journey into exile, is depicted 40 years later by the journalist Baīram at-Tūninsī who was squeezed into the fourth class by the French Consul in Alexandria. See Marilyn Booth, Bayram al-Tunisi’s Egypt, Social Criticism and Narrative Strategies (Exeter: Ithaca Press, 1990).
- 26.
Where James Sanua studied drawing is not reported, but in the edition of the collected issues of his Rihla which features a 12 pages long annex in French, an article about Abou-Naddarah (here Sanua’s pen-name) of the L’Europe Diplomatique, published on 8 June 1879, is quoted where the author mentions that Sanua used to teach drawing lessons to the Pashas’ daughters in Egypt already. See Rihla 30, 13 March (Ādhār) 1879 (Paris: Imprimeuse Ragueneau), 6.
- 27.
Ahmad ʿAbd an-Naʿīm, Hikāyāt fī al-fukāha wa al-kārikātīr (Cairo: Dār al-ʿUlūm, 2009).
- 28.
Rihla 6, 18 September (Aylūl) 1878, 1.
- 29.
Rihla 7, 22 September (Aylūl) 1878, 1.
- 30.
Rihla 11, 22 October (Tishrīn al-awwal) 1878, 1.
- 31.
Franz Schneider, Die politische Karikatur (München: C.H. Beck, 1988), 32 (my translation).
- 32.
Rihla 9, 8 October (Tishrīn al-awwal) 1878, 1.
- 33.
For typically Egyptian expressions and direct quotes of Sanua’s newspapers the letter ‘ج’ (jīm) is transliterated as ‘g’ which is phonetically nearer to the Egyptian pronunciation.
- 34.
Rihla 20, 30 December (Kānūn ath-thānī) 1878, 1; Rihla 21, 8 January (Kānūn ath-thānī)1879, 1; Rihla 28, 21 February (Shubāt) 1879, 1.
- 35.
Rihla 15, 21 November (Tishrīn ath-thānī) 1878, 1.
- 36.
Written without alif in the Egyptian dialect. Rihla 25, 7 February (Shubāt) 1879, 1.
- 37.
Ibid., 1.
- 38.
Rihla 1, 7 August (Āb) 1878, 1.
- 39.
Rihla 2, 14 August (Āb) 1878, 1.
- 40.
Rihla 5, 8 September (Aylūl) 1878, 1.
- 41.
Rihla 10, October (Tishrīn at-thānī) 1878, 1.
- 42.
Rihla 13, 8 November (Tishrīn at-thānī) 1878, 1; Rihla 18, 15 December (Kānūn al-awwal) 1878, 1.
- 43.
Rihla 25, 7 February (Shubāt) 1879, 1.
- 44.
Rihla 8, 30 September (Aylūl) 1878, 1; Rihla 29, 2 March (Ādhār) 1879, 1.
- 45.
Rihla 30, 1.
- 46.
Rihla 4, 30 August (Āb) 1878, 3.
- 47.
Sanua gives a quite mystic explanation for his sympathy for Egypt’s dominant religion in his Memoires: His mother, after losing four children and when pregnant with him, out of her fear to suffer another son’s death, went to see a Shaykh. The religious sage recommended she devote her future son to the faith of Islam. Then he would live a long and prosperous life. This is the reason she made her son James learn all about, and deeply respect, Islam.
- 48.
Numbers 1–7.
- 49.
Rihla 1, 1–4.
- 50.
Rihla 9, 3.
- 51.
Rihla 28, 21 February (Shubāt) 1879, 2.
- 52.
Rihla 29, 4.
- 53.
According to Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, Ismaʿil had not manipulated his own accession to the Egyptian throne, as Sanua eagerly claimed, but was rather overwhelmed by it.
His succession to the Viceroyalty had been more or less a surprise to him, for until within a few months of Said’s death he had not been the immediate heir, and his prospects had been only those of an opulent private person. It was perhaps this unexpected stroke of fortune that from the beginning of his reign led him to extravagance. By nature a speculator and inordinately greedy of wealth, he seems to have looked upon his inheritance and the absolute power now suddenly placed in his hands, not as a public trust, but as the means above all things else of aggrandising his private fortune. At the same time he was as inordinately vain and fond of pleasure, and his head was turned by his high position and the opportunity it gave him of figuring in the world as one of its most splendid princes. Blunt, W. S., Secret History of the English Occupation of Egypt (London: T. Fisher UNWIN Adelphi Terrace, 1907), 16.
- 54.
Rihla 30, 1.
- 55.
Paul de Baignières, L´Egypte Satirique, Album d´Abū Nazzāra (Paris: Imprimerie Lefebvre, 1886) 12.
- 56.
In issues number 1, 13 and 30.
- 57.
Rihla 7, 2–3.
- 58.
Ibid.
- 59.
Rihla 30, 4.
- 60.
See Richard G.G. Price, A History of Punch (London: Collins, 1957).
- 61.
Rihla 1, 1.
- 62.
Rihla 3, 22 August (Āb) 1878, 1–3.
- 63.
Rihla 4, 1–3.
- 64.
Rihla 12, 30 October 1878, 2–3.
- 65.
Messianic savior. Rihla 17, 8 December (Kānūn al-awwal) 1878, 2.
- 66.
Rihla 6, 2–4.
- 67.
Ibid. (my translation).
- 68.
Which was to become the title of ten issues of Sanua’s satirical magazine in the year 1880.
- 69.
Rihla 1, 2–4.
- 70.
Rihla 3, 3–4.
- 71.
Rihla 10, 2–4.
- 72.
Rihla 12, 2–4.
- 73.
Rihla 15, 2–4.
- 74.
Rihla 28, 2–4.
- 75.
Al-Afghani was the Grand Master of Kawkab as-Sharq while Sanua was busy publishing the Rihla.
- 76.
Karim Wissa, “Freemasonry in Egypt: 1789–1921, A Study in Cultural and Political Encounters,” Bulletin (British Society for Middle Eastern Studies) 16, no. 2 (1989): 143–161.
- 77.
Rihla 19, 21 December (Kānūn al-awwal) 1878, 3–4.
- 78.
The Ghuz were an ancient confederation of pagan Turkish tribes who founded nomad empires of vast extent in Central Asia from the sixth to the tenth century. See Charles Wendell, The Evolution of the Egyptian National Image, From its Origins to Ahmad Lutfī al-Sayyid (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972), 109, fn. 66.
Jamal Mohamed Ahmed, when explaining the conflicts in Egyptian society after the retreat of the French, states that, ‘[t]he Mamelukes tried to restore the pre-Napoleonic supremacy; the Turks on the other hand wanted to put an end to them and re-impose their own rule. The people of Cairo hated them both; they referred to them disdainfully as “the Ghuzz”’. Jamal Mohammed Ahmed, The Intellectual Origins of Egyptian Nationalism (London: Oxford University Press, 1960), 6.
- 79.
Rihla 16, 30 November (Tishrīn ath-thānī) 1878, 2–4.
- 80.
Rihla 19, 21 December (Kānūn al-awwal) 1878, 3–4.
- 81.
Rihla 27, 21 February (Shubāt) 1879, 2–4.
- 82.
Abū Nazzāra Zarqā 1, 2.
- 83.
Rihla, 2–4.
- 84.
Ibid., 2–3.
- 85.
Rihla 21, 8 January (Kānūn ath-thānī) 1879, 2–3.
- 86.
Rihla 23, 23 January (Kānūn ath-thānī) 1879, 2–4.
- 87.
Traditional Arabic satirical and picaresque literary genre written in verse. For further reading, see Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila, Maqama: A History of a Genre (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2002).
- 88.
Rihla 11, 2–4.
- 89.
Rihla 4, 2–3.
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Ettmueller, E.U. (2013). Abū Nazzāra’s Journey from Victorious Egypt to Splendorous Paris: The Making of an Arabic Punch . In: Harder, H., Mittler, B. (eds) Asian Punches. Transcultural Research – Heidelberg Studies on Asia and Europe in a Global Context. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-28607-0_10
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