Contested Geographies

This article builds on previous work that has sought to rethink the very ideas of Africa and the Arab world (and their intimately imbricated histories). It presents a comparative analysis of three differing sources from the 1840s, a period of intense crisis in the bilad al-Sudan on the Ottoman Empire's southern frontier, focusing on their conceptual grammars and tracing their imaginative geographies. We argue for a historical methodology that pays attention not only to the usual divides (modern vs. premodern, European vs. non-European) but also to the generic nature of the sources themselves: in this instance, a work of fiction posing as a genuine travel account, a bona fide travel account, and a collection of diplomatic epistolary exchanges.