Mutual color consciousness, mediated by translators, structured the traveler’s identity boundaries

Evidence

Al-Tunisï could not know what the crowd was saying about his color without the mediating translation of his guards, who could not have revealed that information to him until the hostile encounter had resolved itself.Writing some forty years after his original voyage, al-Tunisï thus brings into sharp relief the immediate color consciousness that both he and these Furis instigated in each other.The authority of the sultan, however, shielded him, in the form of the guards and servants he sent along. By his very person and presence, al- Tunisï defined the boundaries between the land of the Arabs, biläd al-`arab, and the land of the blacks, biläd al-südän. — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 167

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the biläd al-arab / biläd al-sudan binary as a central conceptual map of the region.