Egyptians held romanticized ignorance of Sudan despite ruling it for decades

Evidence

But what was this Sudan? Until 1884, the Sudan and Nubia were ostensibly united under the Egyptian aegis, yet throughout the nineteenth century the majority of Egyptians had little idea about real life in these two regions, and instead entertained highly romanticized and vague fantasies about life in Nubia or along the White Nile. Meanwhile, the Egyptian government had only recently completed the extension of its authority in Upper Egypt and Lower Nubia, a project it had begun a few decades previously, thereby establishing a modern administrative system where tribal authority had for so long dominated. — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 308

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels the colonial-administration literature on how metropoles govern territories they barely know (e.g., Martins ‘colonial ignorance’); also echoes the reader’s own comparison of Egypt vs Sudan as internal colony.
• QUESTION: When exactly in the nineteenth century did Cairo complete its administrative extension into Upper Egypt and Lower Nubia, and what form did that tribal-to-modern transition take? Worth chasing dates.