[6] 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.

One of Sanu's cartoons, which criticized the Khedive's fiscal extravagance which caused Egypt's bankruptcy in 1876, led Ismail to order his arrest.

Exile in France simply encouraged his journalistic efforts, and his celebrated journal, reproduced lithographically from handwriting in both Arabic and French, continued to appear, printed at a shop aptly located in the Passage du Caire in the second arrondissement of Paris.

Like many such journals, it frequently changed its name, although the title which remained most constant was Rehlat Abou Naddara Zar'a (Travels of the Man in the Blue Glasses from Egypt to Paris).

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.

[14] 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.

[15] 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.

[13] 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 Koran is not a book of fanaticism, superstition or barbarity.

In the language of his plays, Sanu has been observed to disregard Arabic grammatical rules and take "great liberty in deviating from the conventional writing norms.

Istephan: Never in their lives do authorities and learned men communicate with each other in grammatical language.Unlike his contemporaries such as Adib Ishaq, Sanu did not write for the educated elite, but rather for the general public, using a simple yet effective language accessible to the masses.

[7] He referred to Ismail with sarcastic nicknames such as Shaykh al-Ḥāra (شيخ الحارة 'Chief of the Neighborhood') and his son Tewfik as Tewkif (توقيف 'impediment') or al-Wād al-Ahbal (الواد الأهبل 'the idiot boy').