There were many nuances to cer- tain terms: abïd (slave), barbarï (Berber or barbarian), nübï (Nubian), arabï (Arab), and südänï, to name a few that bore particular significance in the hierarchy of political and economic relations from one end of the Nile Valley to the other. … Within the literature of Egyptian nationalism, especially the literature of writers of colloquial Arabic who paid particular attention to nuances, such words were immensely controversial. Moreover, these words were not sim- ple impositions by Egyptians on Sudanese. As Anders Bjorkelo shows, such words could also be found in the language of Sudanese traders and religious leaders, people as sensitive to difference and community as the nationalists of Egypt. These were words of the market and the slave trade, and were of grave importance in identifying who could be sold and who could not. One Sudanese tribe could identify another with such words and could reveal a kinship based on shared religion or trade networks.And as the colonial rela- tionship between Egypt and the Sudan became politicized as a result of the British occupation, the meanings changed. Eventually, words signifying “slave” or “black,” even the word for Sudanese, would be used in the Sudan itself to identify who was considered suitable by a certain kind of educated Sudanese to speak of the Sudanese nation.

Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Coloni…, loc. 99