Slave-descended Sudanese were deemed too lowly to speak for the nation

Evidence

Shaykh al-Tahtawï inherited his view of the Sudan and its people, who not only were burdened with the ages-old stereotype of them as wild and savage but also were the subjects of many explorations and studies and were conceptualized as a subject people. He was the most politicized of the four voyagers of this study, because of his particularly energetic participation in Muhammad Alï's program of social reform for Egypt, and because of the perspectives about national community and identity that he gained from his experiences in France, which he promoted eloquently and forcefully in Egypt. From Paris, al-Tahtawï brought home a new lexicon to describe his own country, the most powerful being al-watan, his complicated word for the nation and its community and the bond that had to be forged between the two. His deep and abiding love for Egypt was rivaled only by his profound disgust with the Sudan and the Sudanese. His long poem about the Sudan imparts a kind of knowledge different from that shared by the other three voyagers. His master work, Manähij al-albäb al-misriya fï mabähij al-adäb al-asriya, offers a more politicized sense of Egypt's cultural geography. His particular poem about the Sudan and its people also demonstrates how the process of colonialism and nationalism came to be racialized, and how an increasing sense of racial difference could be incorporated into a sense of political and cultural boundaries. — <cite>Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 135</cite> (#corroborates`, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Northern Sudanese elites reserved the term Sudanese for slaves or blacks; British colonial rule punished a Sudanese leader for lacking a defined tribal home.; Sudanese indigenous political voices were ignored in 1894 (+4 more)

Related

• Sudanese nationalism drew on blacks long considered slaves (similarity 0.93)
• Egyptians blamed the Sudanese ‘African world’ for slavery’s existence. (similarity 0.91)
• Sudanese and Egyptians reciprocally held condescension and resentment shaped by colonial hierarchies. (similarity 0.91)
• Egyptian acceptance of Nubians and Sudanese hinged on their remaining ignorant and subordinate. (similarity 0.91)
• Egyptian defenses of slavery glossed over the Sudanese slave trade’s harshness (similarity 0.90)
• Egyptians were surprised to learn Sudan saw them as arrogant (similarity 0.89)
• Egyptian nationalism hardened into racial contempt for the Sudan (similarity 0.89)
• Egyptian racial constructions of blackness hardened mid-century. (similarity 0.89)
• Egyptian nationalists adopted corporeal metaphors for the loss of the Sudan (similarity 0.88)
• Egyptian nationalism was defined against the Sudanese as racial other (similarity 0.88)
• Egyptian writers ranked Sudanese tribes on a racial scale of savagery. (similarity 0.87)
• Egyptian nationalists claimed Sudan for Egypt yet felt it alien and unhomelike. (similarity 0.87)
• Egyptians resented Ottoman-Egyptian superiority while asserting their own rank over Nubians. (similarity 0.87)
• Northern Sudanese slave-owning elites denied freed slaves any political voice (similarity 0.86)
• Al-Tahtawi’s exile poem racialized Sudanese as blackness layered upon blackness. (similarity 0.86)

Broader Connections

• Slavery centrally shaped the Egypt-Sudan relationship yet stereotypes muted it. #expands (0.60)
• Egyptian captives used ventriloquized Sudanese voices to reassert racial rank #corroborates (0.55)
• Egyptian nationalism hardened into racial contempt for the Sudan #corroborates (0.50) — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 135