Looking at Darwïsh's songs, which were intended to be sung in a variation of Sudanese Arabic dialect, and at Alï al-Kassär's portrayal, in blackface, of the half-Nubian, half-Sudanese ne'er-do-well Osman abd al- Basit, this chapter considers the ways in which caricatures of the Sudanese became central to Egyptian articulations of national identity. At the same time that these two performers were making Cairene audiences laugh, another revolution was emerging in the Sudan, led by a group known as the White Flag League, who protested the British government of the Sudan (known as the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium).

Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Coloni…, loc. 120