Elite Egyptian households absorbed Sudanese slaves so thoroughly that their origins became bedtime folklore

Evidence

Interestingly, the children knew a great deal about the slaves too, but the pasts of the slaves became nursery tales, told to soothe the children: “Our nurses used to tell us stories about how they had been captured, and about what their own countries had been like and the customs of their people, until we grew exhausted and they would tuck us in our beds.” — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 852 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Many took pride in direct descent from slaves, a claim that became easier to make as more and more Egyptians entered the ranks of the elite and thus were able to marry (or were given in marriage) the freed slave-women of the Ottoman-Egyptian ruling classes, who were considered to be members of the nobility. There was thus honor and social mobility inherent in the intermarriage between women of the Ottoman-Egyptian households and ambitious Egyptians, demonstrating that a certain kind of slavery led to social mobility. This also created a level of society whose members were half Egyptian and half Circassian, like the lawyer and statesman Ahmad Shafïk.These people took pride in their mothers’ descent and in their ability to marry wives whose slave past ensured them access to nobility. The enslavement of black Africans in North Africa was described (often erroneously so) as being synonymous with this type of intimate slavery. — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 647 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Egyptian nationalism was defined against the Sudanese as racial other; Elite Egyptian children heard slaves’ capture stories reframed as soothing folk tales; Egyptian elites prized descent from slaves as social mobility (+3 more)

Related

• Elite Egyptian children heard slaves’ capture stories reframed as soothing folk tales (similarity 0.91)
• Sudanese slaves’ captive origins were narrated to Egyptian elite children as soothing bedtime tales (similarity 0.91)
• Egyptian elites reframed slave descent as honorable social-capital currency (similarity 0.88)
• Educating Sudanese elites’ children in Cairo served as a tool of Egyptian colonial hegemony (similarity 0.88)
• Egyptian elites prized descent from slaves as social mobility (similarity 0.87)
• Descent from some slaves conferred honor and social mobility in Egypt (similarity 0.87)
• Slaves’ captivity histories were retold to Egyptian elite children as soothing bedtime stories. (similarity 0.86)
• Slavery’s legacy underpinned Egyptian nationalist discourse about the Sudan (similarity 0.83)
• Egyptian antislavery debate conflated African and Circassian slave experience. (similarity 0.82)
• Slave-descended Sudanese were deemed too lowly to speak for the nation (similarity 0.82)
• Egyptian nationalists fictionalized Sudanese slaves to process Victorian racial ideas. (similarity 0.81)
• Egyptian defenses of slavery glossed over the Sudanese slave trade’s harshness (similarity 0.81)
• Egyptian intellectuals defended Islamic slavery as inherently milder than Western slavery. (similarity 0.81)
• Egyptian nationalists’ childhood intimacy with Sudanese household slaves shaped their Nile Valley unity politics (similarity 0.80)
• Egyptian acceptance of Nubians and Sudanese hinged on their remaining ignorant and subordinate. (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• Sudanese slaves’ captive origins were narrated to Egyptian elite children as soothing bedtime tales #corroborates (0.85) — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 852
• Egyptian elites mythologized Sudanese servants as guardians of Ottoman social boundaries. #complicates (0.50)
• Descent from some slaves conferred honor and social mobility in Egypt #expands (0.50) — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 647