The nature of the slavery lived by black men and women in Egypt in the nineteenth century is rarely if ever discussed without being compared to the searing experiences of African slaves in the United States and the Carib- bean. From all accounts, it is clear that African slaves in Egypt did not suf- fer the brutality that so characterized the treatment of blacks in the Ameri- can South.There was no similar plantation culture in which nuclear families were torn apart or in which slaves were subjected to horrifying physical abuse.Although the experience of being captured and the treks of slave car- avans on the Forty Days’ Road (darb al-arba`ïn) were notoriously difficult for recently enslaved Sudanese, once in Egypt their experiences did tend to be milder than those of American slaves.

Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Coloni…, loc. 662