Egyptian slave labor was stratified hierarchically by race and ethnicity

Evidence

There was a well-established hierarchy of labor that constructed the work and world of the slave in Egypt in the nineteenth century and was itself a construction of stereotyping about the qualities of different races and ethnicities. Circassian women were at the top of this ladder and were welcomed into the harems of the wealthiest and most prestigious households. Ethiopian women came next, bought often as concubines for the middle class.They were prized for their beauty, not for their ability to do household work, as were other African women, who stood much lower in this hierarchy. — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 665

Categorization

• DEFINE: Illustrates how racial stereotyping structured a concrete labor hierarchy — useful for the reader distinguishing ‘racial’ colonial sorting in Egypt from Sudanese dynamics.
• XREF: Hierarchy-by-ethnic-origin of slaves echoes the reader’s interest in how colonial tools deploy racial categories differently across Egypt and Sudan. — connects to: Muslim slaves who read Arabic were reclassified as Arabs, superior to Blacks