Sudanese slaves themselves contested imperial labels by asserting Arab identity over black identity

Evidence

This conflict of meaning created an even larger silence during the trial when the slaves asserted that they were from biläd al-`arab (land of the Arabs; Islamic territory) and not biläd al-südän (land of the blacks). Until that assertion, they had been six tabula rasa: innocents from unknown Africa who could be adopted into the Egyptian family on many levels; orphans from Africa who could be saved by the British abolitionists and the imperial administrators who maintained the Slave Trade Bureau. — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 107

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth chasing: how did Sudanese slave self-identification as ‘land of the Arabs’ complicate the Egyptian and British imperial categories imposed on them?