Al-Tahtawi’s exile poem racialized Sudanese as blackness layered upon blackness.

Evidence

In it, he complained that “the Sudan is never a place for someone like me, not the place for my safety or my happiness” (wa ma al-südän, qat maqamun mithl[im]—wa lä salämï fïhi wa la suadï). As he described it, half of its inhabitants were like beasts and others like stones.The men of the Sudan forced their women into prostitution, and they accepted the progeny of these unions, despite the prohibition of Islamic law. They taught the women to fornicate like beasts. If it had not been for the white Arabs—law la al-bayda min al-arab la känu— they would have been blacker and blacker and blacker, nothing but blackness—sawädan fï sawädin fï sawädin. — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 242

Categorization

• XREF: Al-Tahtawi’s dehumanizing portrayal of Sudanese supports the reader’s comparative coloniality study of Egypt-Sudan relations.