Al-Tunisï explained Sudanese women’s conduct as learned custom that hardened into nature

Evidence

Know that the women of the Sudan are much more lustful and wanton than other women for the following reasons: … The lack of chastity and not settling in the house; for you see women among them who are not married and who have more than one lover. … He then adds to this list two more reasons for these pathologies among not just Därfüri women but all women of the Sudan. First was the lack of restrictions on the number of times they could marry and, when married, the fact that they could mingle with unrelated men. According to al-Tunisï, men also behaved with a similar lack of restraint, conducting relations with numerous women and thus offering no example on which women could model themselves. Second was that Sudanese women customarily had socialized with men since their childhood, “and if custom is reinforced [istihkamat] it becomes nature.” — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 171

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘custom reinforced becomes nature’ logic resembles later environmentalist/hereditarian colonial arguments about racialized character — connects to the reader’s framework study.