Ṣanūʿ, also known by his pen name Abou Naddara [the man with glasses], was an Egyptian political activist, journalist, and playwright. He is one of the rare examples of an Egyptian Jew who rose to prominence in Egyptian politics. 

Ṣanūʿ was born in Egypt into an established Sephardic family. His father emigrated from Livorno before Ṣanūʿ's birth, acquiring protégé status during the capitulations. His father worked for Prince Yaken, the grandson of Muhammad Ali Pasha, Khedive of Egypt and Sudan. Legend has it that when Ṣanūʿ was thirteen, he wrote an Arabic poem and recited it before the prince, who was fascinated by the young boy's linguistic and literary talents. The prince later sent him to be educated in Livorno, Italy in 1853, where he studied arts and literature. Upon his return to Egypt in 1855, he worked as a tutor for the prince's children before joining the faculty of the Arts and Crafts School in Cairo. 

Widely regarded as a polyglot, writing in French, English, Turkish, Persian, Hebrew, and Italian as well as Arabic, Ṣanūʿ became active as a journalist in Egypt, the first to write in Egyptian Arabic, which was intended to appeal to a mass audience. His cartoons were drawn so as to be understood by even the illiterate. He played an important role in the development of Egyptian theater in the 1870s, both as a writer of original plays in Arabic and by adapting French plays for an Arabic-speaking audience. However, it was as a satirical nationalist journalist that he originally gained acclaim in his day, becoming a thorn in the side of both the Khedive of Egypt and the British colonial authorities.  

In 1870, the Khedive of Egypt, Ismail the Magnificent, agreed to financially support Sanu's theater company, which performed plays on nationalist themes in colloquial Egyptian Arabic. Ultimately, the two had a falling out in 1876 when Egypt's bankruptcy led Ismail to withdraw his support for the company. Perhaps as a consequence of this event, Ṣanūʿ mercilessly caricatured both the Khedive and the British in his journalism and cartoons as incompetent buffoons. On 21 March 1877, Ṣanūʿ founded the satirical magazine Abou Naddara Zarqa [The Man with the Blue Spectacles], which had an immediate appeal to both the literate and illiterate, and the initial print-run of which was thought to be 15,000. In March and April 1877, fifteen issues appeared, but no copies of these are known to exist. 

One of Sanu's cartoons, which criticized the Khedive's fiscal extravagance that caused Egypt's bankruptcy in 1876, led Ismail to order his arrest. Ultimately, due to the politically liberal and revolutionary nature of his writing, Ṣanūʿ was banished from Egypt and sent into exile on June 22, 1878, sailing from Alexandria to Marseilles. Ṣanūʿ continued his journalistic efforts and his celebrated journal was published in both Arabic and French in Paris. Like many periodicals of the period, it frequently changed names to avoid the attention of government censors, although the title that remained most constant was Reḥlat Abou Naddara Zarqa [Travels of the Man in the Blue Glasses from Egypt to Paris]. It was the first Arabic-language magazine to feature cartoons, with bilingual French and Arabic captions. Although officially banned in Egypt, it was smuggled inside other larger newspapers and was widely read; it is possible that some print runs exceeded 3,000 copies.  

The magazine focused on both the political and financial difficulties in Egypt, and Ṣanūʿ was probably privy to this information from sympathetic contacts within the administration. From 1882 onward, Ṣanūʿ drew cartoons that depicted the British as red locusts devouring all of Egypt's wealth, leaving nothing behind for the Egyptians. A recurring theme of Ṣanūʿ's was the inability of the British characters in his cartoons to speak proper French. Unsurprisingly, their witty dialogue butchering the French language was highly lauded in 19th-century France. His Egyptian characters, however, spoke perfect French, an element that was intended to challenge 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. 

Ṣanūʿ became a celebrity in France, leveraging his Orientalism to garner attention. He was known to don the traditional Egyptian "galabiyah" and turban for photographs and when delivering his lectures, perhaps because he believed that his credibility as an expert on Egypt relied on this exotic appeal. Ṣanūʿ achieved such fame in France that when a small fire broke out in his apartment in Paris, it was covered by the major French newspapers. An article in Le Courrier de France in September of 1895 reported that Ṣanūʿ had "become such an in-demand conference presenter that no week passes by without the press documenting one of his many… presentations." 

Ṣanūʿ's Egyptian nationalism was based on loyalty to Egypt as a state and geographic entity rather than on a sense of ethnicity or religion, as he presented Egypt as a pluralistic space in which Muslims, Christians and Jews were all united by a common love of al-waṭan [the homeland]. These assertions were made to counter the claim made by British officials such as Lord Cromer, who justified the British occupation of Egypt as necessary to protect its religious minorities from the Muslim majority. Ṣanūʿ wrote that as an Egyptian Jew, he did not feel threatened by the Muslim majority, stating in a speech in Paris: "The Qurʾan is not a book of fanaticism, superstition, or barbarity." 

Conscious of his need for French support, Ṣanūʿ never criticized French imperialism in Tunisia, Morocco, or Algeria. After France concluded an alliance with Russia in 1894, Ṣanūʿ drew a cartoon with the title Les amis de nos amis sont nos amis [The Friends of Our Friends Are Our Friends] featuring an Egyptian, an Indian, and an Iranian all cheering a French sailor and a Russian sailor marching down a street as friends while a thuggish-looking John Bull looks on in disapproval. 

The British–French agreement of 1904 in which France abandoned all claims to Egypt, and the Young Turk revolution of 1908 that sidelined the Arab subjects of the Ottoman Empire's aspirations for independence, were most likely a huge disappointment to Ṣanūʿ. Although we will never know the exact reason, shortly after these events occurred, he stopped writing. Ṣanūʿ lived out his life in Paris. He died in 1912 and is buried in the Jewish section of the Montparnasse cemetery.