Khedive Ismaïl's ambitious and optimistic project to reorder Egyptian soci- ety also extended to the Sudan, with consequences as profound as those that so alarmed Yaqüb Sanüa and Abdallah al-Nadïm. In the words of P. M. Holt, the Egyptian administration of the Sudan made it "the first region in the interior of Africa to experience (although at one remove) the tensions characteristic of Western colonialism."1 These tensions, which Holt charac- terizes as a "general incompatibility between Sudanese traditional society and the new model derived ultimately from Europe" caused a social and political upheaval that was eventually "resolved" in the Mahdïya.

Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Coloni…, loc. 495