Egyptian satire infantilized domestic Sudanese but dignified foreign Sudanese warriors.

Evidence

Sanüa allows Muhammad’s fear and naïveté to cloak his own. Muhammad also raises the question of Egyptian identity again, with his purported ignorance and Sanüa’s manipulation creating a pun, in Arabic, on the idea of awlad alharam. In the 1870s, this term was an epithet for Egyptians and also bore another meaning: “sons of filthy hags.” I am interpreting Muhammad the Nubian’s expression as an articulation of Sanüa’s epithet for the khedive and his minions, the official “Egyptians” worthy only of his contempt. Although directly related to the dramatic turn Sanüa’s political life was taking, Muhammad’s fear also provided comic relief. Drawn upon the familiar lines of Sudanese and Nubians represented in early Egyptian drama, this Nubian buffoon’s fears and mispronunciations made him a sympathetic, unthreatening, and infantile character for Egyptians, a comfortable gatekeeper of domestic life during a time of great political upheaval. … The Sudan figure here is exaggerated and oversized, but not infantilized. This warrior represented the external, foreign Sudanese for Sanü`a, not always understandable but ever worthy of respect, different from the domesticated brother who worked in the interior world of Egyptian society. — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 331

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s broader project on Egyptian vs Sudanese colonial representations and how colonial tools produced differing images of the colonized.