Sudanese traders were frontier explorers of unknown southern regions akin to Europeans.

Evidence

In those times, the provinces situated south of the White Nile held for the young men of Khartoum the same kind of attraction that enticed certain British youth and pushed them at different times to explore the unknown regions of America and savage Australia. The expeditions that the Sudanese launched to penetrate these areas were trading expeditions. But those who undertook them had to prepare completely for the plunge into personal, ongoing and difficult adventures. For many regions of the country were unknown and had not yet been discovered and the stories told about them inspired wonder and amazement, exactly as happened in Europe in the beginning about the wonders of the West and its legends. — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 562

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels frontier-exploration comparisons in settler-colonial literature like The Namesake’s migration arcs and broader comparative colonial studies.
• QUESTION: Does al-Zubayr’s own account frame Sudanese expansion south as itself a form of internal colonialism?