Sanü`a symbolized Sudan’s conquest through the eunuch Khulkhäl Aga’s castration

Evidence

Khulkhäl Aga also offers Sanü`a’s audience insights into the outer peripheries of Egypt’s borders, because, with his amputation, he personifies the very act of conquest of the Sudan. It seems clearer here, though, that Khulkhäl Aga is as much a victim of the Ottoman ruling class as any Egyptian: he lost his manhood and is thus symbolic of Egyptians’ own inability to gain autonomy in the government that ruled them. — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 434

Categorization

• XREF: The castrated eunuch standing literally for colonial castration of a conquered territory resonates with the emasculation-inflected readings common in postcolonial theory (e.g. Fanon on colonization and masculinity).
• QUESTION: Why present the eunuch as ‘as much a victim of the Ottoman ruling class as any Egyptian’ here, when earlier sketches use him as an instrument of khedival oppression over Egyptians? The double position bears chasing.