Women’s conduct served as the primary marker of civilization in al-Tunisï’s Sudan account

Evidence

Civilization existed where the honor code was similar to al-Tunisï’s, where he felt less like a foreigner. If race is one marker of cultural difference and boundaries, then women are the signposts of civilization in al-Tunisï’s account. Their beauty, their chastity, their dress all serve as codes for who is wild and who is not. — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 169

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s broader coloniality interest: the gendered civilizational coding of colonized populations; parallels the ‘immodesty’ panics the reader has studied.