Egyptian mapping of the Sudan depended on European explorers’ prior geographic knowledge and expertise.

Evidence

As the texts of Muhammad al-Tunisï, Selim Qapudan, Rifaa Rafi al- Tahtawï, and `Alï Mubärak demonstrate, the process of conceptualizing and mapping the Sudan was shadowed by European thinkers and explorers and their texts. Each text was heavily influenced by a European with prior experience in geographic exploration (and, thus. the basic mechanics of empire) in the Sudan. — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 285

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to postcolonial accounts of how colonized elites appropriated the colonizer’s tools of empire to claim their own peripheral territories.