Sudanese memory of the Turkïya obscures Arabic-speaking Egyptians’ real role in that colonial administration

Evidence

The Egyptian colonial experience in the Sudan was an encounter that took place in two territories: in the Sudan and in Egypt itself (just as Egyptian travelers to Europe reexperienced a sense of empire). It is true that the administration of the Sudan was known as the Turkïya by generations of Sudanese, because the Sudan initially had been conquered by Turkishspeaking officers for Muhammad Alï (also known as Mehemet Alï), the Albanian Ottoman officer who was acting as a governor of Egypt for the Ottoman Empire in the early nineteenth century. But the characterization of the administration as Turkish by people unfamiliar with the ethnic nuances of Egypt’s population also disguises the fact that native-born, Arabic-speaking Egyptians participated in the colony’s administration, more prominently as decades passed and the administration strengthened its roots. — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 56

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies the term ‘Turkïya’ — Sudanese name for the Egyptian colonial administration — and its misleading ethnic implication.
• XREF: Connects to ‘second colonization’ concept in Egyptian historiography and to the reader’s Egypt-vs-Sudan comparative coloniality question.