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. When he wrote about the Sudan and Africa in his fictional narrative Alam al-Dïn in 1857, it was with an almost Montesquieu-like empathy. But the Sudan served also as a warning: Egypt had to beware that, unless it actively pursued knowledge of the outside world, it would be as easily marginalized and as vulnerable as he considered the Sudan to be.

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