An Arab scholar on the desert route felt racial alienation from darker Sudanese

Evidence

Därfür was in a strange and complicated way a homeland for Muhammad ibn Umar al-Tunisï, but the physical act of voyaging there across the frightening expanse of darb al-arbaïn caused Muhammad to experience himself as a foreigner for the first time. He became very sick along the way, finding “myself among those not of my tribe [ma`a ghayrï abnä jinsï], but instead between tribesmen whose language I could understand only a little; I did not see among them one face that was pleasing to me.”This feeling of alienation was powerful enough to bring tears to his eyes, and all he saw reinforced his terror: the faces surrounding him were “blackness in blackness in blackness [sawädan fï sawädin fï sawädin].” He regretted having exposed himself to the danger presented by these “sons of Ham” (abna Ham). He remembered what he had heard of their hostility to the “sons of Shem,” and “a feeling of dread possessed me that I cannot describe, to the point where I almost demanded that we return.” At this moment of abandoning himself to his fears, Muhammad al-Tunisï took refuge in the texts of his studies at al- Azhär and noted how they praised the benefits of travel, saying that travel could provide one with new kinds of sustenance, and that “as the learned men said, ‘The voyage uncovers the morals of men.’” — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 157

Categorization

• DEFINE: Hamitic/Shemitic racial taxonomy (sons of Ham vs. sons of Shem) was mobilised by an Arab traveler to describe fellow Muslims in Sudan.
• XREF: Relevant to the reader’s Egypt-Sudan colonial comparison: the racial boundary running through Islamicate Africa, and how ‘foreignness’ was felt within a shared faith and caravan economy.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing how the Ham–Shem discourse appears in other travelers’ accounts of the darb al-arba’in route, and how Sudanese sources responded.