Al-Tahtawi’s nationalist vision of Sudan as Egyptian coexisted with deep personal alienation.

Evidence

His personal sense of geography was striking: the Sudan, he states, when one is actually living there, does not at all feel like a part of Egypt.Al-Tahtawï felt himself terribly oppressed in his exile so far from home, living near people who were basically inanimate objects or wild barbarians to him, unable or unwilling to participate in the culture that al-Tahtawï had brought with him. But his sense of nationalist connection to Egypt was powerful enough for him to argue that bringing the Sudan closer into the Egyptian sphere created one country, with links to both the glories of the ancient Egyptian past and the future power of Europe. Still, the Sudan never felt like home. — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 246

Categorization

Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims

• XREF: The lived-geography vs nationalist-ideology disconnect parallels postcolonial theories of internal colonialism and ‘imagined’ national unity.

Related

• Egyptian intellectuals felt intimately connected to but never at home in the colonial Sudan (similarity 0.90)
• Al-Tahtawi originated the concept of watan in Egyptian society (similarity 0.86)
• An exiled Egyptian scholar experienced Sudan as both geographically and temporally remote (similarity 0.85)
• Egyptian nationalism framed Sudan as Egypt’s natural colonial site, not a threat (similarity 0.85)
• Egyptian nationalists claimed Sudan for Egypt yet felt it alien and unhomelike. (similarity 0.84)
• Al-Tahtawï viewed European colonialism as a model for Egypt to emulate in Sudan (similarity 0.84)
• Al-Tahtawï reconciled his Sudan exile as involuntary yet celebrated it as Egyptian civilizing work (similarity 0.83)
• Egyptian nationalists adopted corporeal metaphors for the loss of the Sudan (similarity 0.83)
• British anti-slavery scrutiny silenced Egyptian nationalist claims on reconquering Sudan (similarity 0.82)
• A nationalist reframed Sudanese as equals by appealing to shared history rather than Islam (similarity 0.82)
• Egyptian nationalists framed Sudan as family bound to Egyptian dictates, silencing Sudanese protest (similarity 0.82)
• Sudan simultaneously built Egyptian national identity and signified exile from it (similarity 0.82)
• Egyptian nationalists drew on ancient imperial precedent to justify Sudan conquest (similarity 0.82)
• Slave-descended Sudanese were deemed too lowly to speak for the nation (similarity 0.82)
• Egyptian nationalists could be colonizers in Sudan while colonized at home (similarity 0.82)