In addition to the effects of their “detribalization,” these former south- erners had to struggle with the ambitions and cultural expectations of other Sudanese tribes and classes. The traditional leaders so respected by the British administration—the “three Sayyids”: Alï al-Mirghänï, al-Sharif Yusuf al-Hindï, and the Mahdï’s son, Sayyid Abd al-Rahman al-Mahdï— represented the two northern Arab tribes, the Barabra and the Dongolowi, tribes who for generations had bought and sold the ancestors of the soldiers and southerners that rallied around Alï abd al-Latïf. Al-Mahdï and the Ansar problematized the very term Sudanese, which in 1924 connoted “detribalized,” signifying a person of slave origins, a group that included Alï abd al-Latïf. Such individuals could lay no claim to a tribal name and, therefore, according to general opinion, spoke for no one.

Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Coloni…, loc. 1030