If the Sudan crystallized into a racially inferior but absolutely necessary colony of Egypt for al-Tahtawï, `Alï Mubärak saw it as a landscape of savagery, but one whose immaturity represented a past only recently shared by Egypt.The connection was much more intimate. For Mubärak, the alleged practices and customs of Africans and the Sudanese were not unlike those of pre-Islamic Arabs. Within them lay as much potential and possibility as in any child.

Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Coloni…, loc. 250