From Paris, al-Tahtawï brought home a new lexicon to describe his own country, the most powerful being al-watan, his complicated word for the nation and its community and the bond that had to be forged between the two. His deep and abiding love for Egypt was rivaled only by his pro- found disgust with the Sudan and the Sudanese. … His particular poem about the Sudan and its people also demon- strates how the process of colonialism and nationalism came to be racialized, and how an increasing sense of racial difference could be incorporated into a sense of political and cultural boundaries.

Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Coloni…, loc. 135