Egyptian writers ranked Sudanese tribes on a racial scale of savagery.

Evidence

Keeping contact minimal between Egyptians and Sudanese in his accounts of the Sudan, the author also set up a racial scale by which he measured Sudanese tribes, which depended on how savage their customs were. People of Sennär, for example, practiced a frightening magic, in which they could turn themselves into wolves.Though such devilish practices were not appropriate for discussion, the author wrote coyly, presenting them in his book made certain his readers knew that people from Sennär were not at all like Egyptians. The blackest of all tribes, the Dinka and the Shilluk, lived way beyond the pale, worshiping pagan idols and wearing hardly any clothes. And yet, page after page, the author asserted that indissoluble links existed between Egypt and the Sudan based on Islam. — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 752

Categorization

• XREF: Shows Egyptians importing the same racial-hierarchy colonial tool Britain used on them, completing the replication thesis. — connects to: Egyptian nationalism was defined against the Sudanese as racial other; Al-Tahtawi portrayed Sudanese as racially inferior, beast-like, and blackened; Egyptian slavery ranked slaves by ethnicity, placing Circassians and Ethiopians above African women. (+14 more)
• CANDY: The Sennar shape-shifting-into-wolves detail is a striking, shareable nugget about Egyptian colonial anthropology.
• corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 752

Broader Connections

• Egyptian colonial writers justified domination by styling Sudanese identity as deficient #corroborates (0.90)
• Egyptian nationalism hardened into racial contempt for the Sudan #corroborates (0.75) — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 135
• Egyptian writers framed Egyptian rule as a civilizing force over a wild Sudan #corroborates (0.70)
• Egyptian nationalists, however anti-colonial, retained racial prejudice against Sudanese #corroborates (0.65)
• Egyptian nationalists deployed racial stereotypes about Sudanese domestics #expands (0.60)
• Egyptian nationalists actively used European race discourse to frame views on Sudan #expands (0.60) — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 98
• Sudanese and Egyptians reciprocally held condescension and resentment shaped by colonial hierarchies. #expands (0.55)
• Egyptian imperialist writers invoked pharaonic and Arab conquests to justify ruling the Sudan. #expands (0.50)
• Egyptians conflated Nubian, Sudanese, and Ethiopian identities in racial terms #expands (0.50)
• Egyptians blamed the Sudanese ‘African world’ for slavery’s existence. #expands (0.50)
• Egyptian racial constructions of blackness hardened mid-century. #corroborates (0.50)
• Sudanese slave women served as boundary markers for Egyptian racial and civilizational identity #expands (0.45)