Sanü`a’s popular satires targeted Turkish-speaking officers and the khedive’s petty abuses

Evidence

Al-Quradätï (The Monkey Showman), first published in 1878, offers another example of Sanüa's use of the Sudanese in the domain of intimate Egyptian life to criticize Egyptian politics. Sad, the street entertainer who performs with monkeys, confronts the abusive behavior of more Turkish officers (the story itself is set in “the days of the Ottomans” [fï ayäm alghuzz]) and the khedive, here called Shaykh al-Hära (chief of the quarter). Sad and the khedive's entourage bump into each other, and Baclava Agha, speaking mostly in Turkish, orders Sad to get away from them. But the khedive wants the tax money he insists the entertainer owes. Sad protests poverty and is threatened with imprisonment. He agrees to prison, if they will help find someone to look after his monkey, his donkey, his cat, and so on, but al-Hära persists in his demands. In the following speech, Sad describes the difference color makes in Egyptian society, and the way one is treated as a consequence of dark color: Now where on earth am I supposed to go to raise these two thousand silver coins? — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 435

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies that al-Quradätï is a monkey showman sketch and Shaykh al-Hära a satiric name for the khedive, in Sanü`a’s anti-Ottoman theatrical satire.