It is universally recognized among scholars of Egyptian his- tory and literature that al-Tahtawï was the originator of the concept watan (nation, patrie) in Egyptian society and the first to articulate a sense of Egypt as a culturally and politically unified community. In his important historical works, al-Tahtawï’s emerging sense of nationalism helped create a map of Egyptian civilization. For the purpose of this study, two factors make al-Tahtawï’s literary mapping interesting: his idealization of the Sudan as a conquered and dependent territory whose resources could help Egypt achieve Muhammad `Alï’s goals, and his horror of the Sudan itself, when he was sent to live in Khartoum in 1850, eight years after Selim Qapudan had completed his final expedition up the Nile.

Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Coloni…, loc. 217