By closely studying this army – how it was fed, supplied, and medically cared for, and more importantly, how its soldiers were conscripted and trained, how they reacted to their officers' commands, and how they resisted the military authorities – this book argues that this army was, indeed, instrumental in founding the modern Egyptian nation. This it did, though, not by enlightening Egyptians regarding the essential truths of the "nation," but by instituting novel practices of surveillance, control and management that radically altered the nature of the government in Cairo and fundamentally changed the manner in which it dealt with the Egyptian population. This army was also a crucial element in changing the ethnic and linguistic configuration of Egypt's middle and upper classes in a manner that unwittingly gave rise to "nationalist" sentiments among the soldiery who were mostly Arabic-speakers and who resented being ruled and dominated by a Turkish-speaking military/bureaucratic elite.

DEFINE: The book's core thesis: the Egyptian nation was built not by enlightenment but by surveillance, control, and management practices.

What is offered below is an attempt to engage with Mitchell's argument by questioning, not his characterization of what preceded the introduction of modern "reforms," but by elaborating on his analysis of how they did in fact work in the Egyptian context. For Mitchell, in his attempt to uncover the logic of these modern institutions of power and their physical representations, is not interested in showing how they actually worked in the specific case of Egypt. … This book seeks to understand the nature of the discrepancy between the plan and its execution, between the law and its implementation that Mitchell takes to be due only to the very nature of modern institutions of power and their representations. By looking at the specific Egyptian context where these modern devices were applied and basing itself on an imposing and impressive institution of power, this book offers alternative explanations of the nature of this gap that separated model from reality.

SEED: The discrepancy between institutional design and actual implementation is a rich theme for articles on modernization, state capacity, or bureaucratic failure in postcolonial contexts. Builds on: "Muhammad Ali's army forged the modern Egyptian nation through novel control practices."

The reason why Palmerston was so adamantly opposed to Mehmed Ali, Marsot believes, was the Pasha's economic policies which Palmerston viewed with suspicion since British goods were barred from Egyptian markets as well as from other areas under the Pasha's rule. In other words, while enumerating other potential reasons for Palmerston's opposition to Mehmed Ali, Marsot argues that it was mostly the fear that "Muhammad Ali could well become a tiresome [commercial] rival" to the British that caused Palmerston's venomous hostility to the Pasha leading to the latter's eventual "undoing."

Even before the Pasha's death a large number of the factories, schools and other establishments that he had founded were either closed down or were abandoned and neglected. European, especially British, intervention is usually identified as the cause of the failure of this ambitious, well-planned and impressive "experiment,"

QUESTION: The highlight signals that this standard explanation may be incomplete or contested, inviting the question of what the true cause was. Builds on: "Egyptian context explains the gap between plan and execution."

This book offers a critique of this particular reading of Egyptian history. While not concentrating on the person of Mehmed Ali Pasha, it investigates his career closely to see how it is read in a manner that makes the three centuries preceding it appear as tyrannical and foreign. More fundamentally, it deals with Mehmed Ali's long career as a way of explaining how "Egypt" came to be seen as a nation with a purposeful, clear identity. Rather than taking "Egypt" as referring to a nation with an unadulterated identity inhabiting a territory with distinct borders that sharply distinguish it from other nations, this book argues that "Egypt" came to refer to a nation so defined only in the nineteenth century and mostly as a result of Mehmed Ali's policies.

DEFINE: Clarifies that 'Egypt' the coherent nation is a nineteenth-century construct, not an eternal identity. XREF: Connects to the earlier claim that Muhammad Ali's army forged the modern Egyptian nation, showing the nation-formation thesis extends to its very definition. Builds on: "Muhammad Ali's army forged the modern Egyptian nation through novel control practices."

The problem with this argument insofar as it pertains to the army, besides the obvious one of lumping together the entire rural population of Egypt under the general rubric of "fellahin," is that the population of Egypt, far from enthusiastically flocking to serve in the army, was in fact very resentful of military service and strongly resisted serving in the army. Recognizing that the scale of this resistance was alarming, that it was not localized but was widespread throughout Egypt, and that the rural population went out of their way to make this resistance obvious, it is still commonplace to argue that this was only a temporary reaction caused above all by "the fellah's strong attachment to his land and the unfamiliarity of military life to him."

DEFINE: Clarifies who 'fellahin' actually are and corrects the mistaken assumption that rural Egyptians eagerly flocked to military service. QUESTION: Why did the author claim this was 'still commonplace' to wave away? What evidence contradicts the 'strong attachment to land' explanation? Builds on: "Muhammad Ali's army forged the modern Egyptian nation through novel control practices."

In contrast to the nationalist view according to which Mehmed Ali's efforts were frustrated by Great Britain, this final chapter argues that the Pasha's career was a highly successful one: he fought for hereditary rule for himself and for his sons who were to follow him, and this is precisely what he managed to accomplish.

XREF: Contradicts the earlier claimed 'British intervention often explains Muhammad Ali's failed experiment' (loc 41), directly overturning that nationalist reading. Pays off: "Egyptian context explains the gap between plan and execution."

In this letter the Pasha was contemplating the efforts he had made so far in helping his Sultan and was gloomily thinking of the prospect of fighting a combined European naval force that he would have little chance of defeating. "Here I am at a loss," he said: "shall I be grieved at the calamity of the Sublime State (devlet-i aliyye) or at my own lost effort?" Instead of translating devlet-i aliyye as "the Sublime State," the conventional term for the Ottoman Empire, Marsot in her citation of that letter translates it as "my country." … Rather than viewing Mehmed Ali as a national or proto-national hero, the present book argues that the Pasha did have ambivalent feelings towards both his Egyptian subjects and his Ottoman Sultan not because he was suffering from an identity crisis caused by the fact that he was an Albanian who "had no cultural identity other than the Ottoman one," causing him to have a "love-hate relationship with the Ottomans and [to fear] a loss of identity," but because of his untenable position within the Ottoman Empire. For it was the Pasha's desire to carve out an empire for himself at the expense of the Sultan's own empire, an act that could only be seen as one of rebellion and aggression, and at the same time his desire to be forgiven by the Sultan that caused the Pasha's conflicting "psychological" problems.

Builds on: "Egyptian context explains the gap between plan and execution."

The digging of the Maḥmūdiyya canal offers a graphic example of the degree to which the Pasha had managed to secure his control over the province of Egypt and is a testimony to his ability to undertake huge infrastructural projects that none of the Ottoman governors before him had managed to undertake. Started in April 1817, the project lasted for three years and was aimed at linking Alexandria to the western branch of the Nile. The ambitious project involved coercing thousands of men and women from all the provinces of Lower Egypt to work on it. During the month of March 1819 the number of laborers working on the project was said to have been as high as 300,000. After its completion the canal was 72 kilometers long and had cost 35,000 purses (around 7.5 million francs). Although contemporary reports stress the appallingly high rate of casualties (estimates range from 12,000 to 100,000) and the highly improvised manner in which the canal was excavated, still, the sheer size of the labor force involved as well as the cost and duration of the project testify to the ability of the Pasha's administration in Cairo to tap and control the human and material resources of his province.

Builds on: "Muhammad Ali's army forged the modern Egyptian nation through novel control practices."

The present book, while accepting the assumption that Britain did indeed view Mehmed Ali's activities suspiciously and that her policies as represented and pursued by Lord Palmerston were, in fact, instrumental in curbing Mehmed Ali's power, does not unproblematically assume that the reason for this hostile stance was its fear of the Pasha's industrial schemes. Rather, it argues that Mehmed Ali's imperialist expansion over wide areas of the Ottoman Empire seriously challenged Britain's more ambitious imperialist designs and was regarded in London and Bombay as a threat to Britain's possessions in Asia, her communications with India and her influence in Istanbul.

Pays off: "Egyptian context explains the gap between plan and execution."

European, especially British, intervention is usually identified as the cause of the failure of this ambitious, well-planned and impressive "experiment," and two episodes are often mentioned as examples of how Europe managed to frustrate Mehmed Ali's ambitious policies. The first was the 1838 Balta Liman commercial treaty between Great Britain and the Sublime Porte, aimed at abolishing commercial monopolies throughout the Ottoman Empire at large but targeted specifically at Mehmed Ali's monopolies. … The second incident that is usually highlighted to stress how European efforts were most instrumental in aborting this impressive "experiment" in development was the firman of 1841 which was passed by the Ottoman Sultan but which was a result of European pressure. This firman stripped Egypt of the territorial possessions that it had managed to acquire during the preceding two decades and, of equal significance, reduced the size of its armed forces to 18,000 men during peacetime, only a small fraction of its original size.

Pays off: "Egyptian context explains the gap between plan and execution."

Two developments in particular assume gigantic proportions and mark 1821 as a crucial year in the Pasha's career, namely the successful experimentation with the cultivation of long-staple cotton and the founding of a modern conscription-based army. While both these developments took place in the same year, there was no causal link between them. Nonetheless, from that time onwards very strong links existed between these two developments of the Pasha's policies which proved to be the cornerstones of his entire regime: through cotton cultivation, which grew exponentially in the 1820s, the Pasha managed to reap unprecedented profits from its sale, which he then monopolized and used to construct his army, build his navy, establish his factories and construct numerous schools, hospitals and palaces. … The army occupied central stage among the Pasha's numerous institutions and was the raison d'être of various other impressive institutions. For example, the many factories that were founded were intended mainly to produce commodities for the use of the army, which was their most important market. Similarly, most of the schools that were opened were aiming at graduating officers for the army. Likewise, the earliest modern hospitals to be built in Egypt were essentially military hospitals that were constructed near camps with high troop concentration.

Pays off: "Muhammad Ali's army forged the modern Egyptian nation through novel control practices."

This is the year that Mehmed Ali started to found a modern army in Egypt, an army which was based on conscription and which relied on the institutions of the modern state that he founded mainly to serve that army. … By the time Mehmed Ali started to found this army in 1820 he had already been occupying the prestigious and lucrative post of governor of Egypt on behalf of the Ottoman Sultan for fifteen years. During this long period he had managed to tighten Cairo's control over the provinces by fighting corruption in the local bureaucracy, by conducting a cadastral survey (1813–14) that was crucial in abolishing the tax farming system (iltizām) and in the cancellation of the immunities on agricultural land belonging to mosques and pious foundations (awqāf), and, most importantly, by getting rid in the infamous Massacre of the Citadel (1811) of the power of the military landlords, the Mamluks, who had been in effective control of the province for centuries in spite of Ottoman legal suzerainty. … As a result of these measures annual revenue increased from 8 million francs in 1805 to 50 million francs in 1821,30 allowing the Pasha to undertake projects that were not even conceivable in the long period of Ottoman rule.

QUESTION: The revenue jump from 8 to 50 million francs is striking — worth checking how much came from land reform vs. cotton and trade. XREF: Connects to the earlier claimed highlight that cotton profits financed the army and institutions; the revenue explosion likely combines both. Builds on: "Egyptian context explains the gap between plan and execution."

On 25 November 1826 Mehmed Ali Pasha, the Ottoman Governor of Egypt, received in his palace Mr. John Barker in order to accept his credentials as the new British Consul in Alexandria. … In a sign of deference, the Pasha stood up to greet the new consul, but ignored the official papers containing his credentials that he had in his hand.

DEFINE: Clarifies how diplomatic ritual's micro-snubs conveyed strategic power plays against European emissaries.

Although I left my native mountains before I attained to manhood, the principal people in the place never took any step in the business of the commune, without previously inquiring what was my pleasure. I came to this country an obscure adventurer, and when I was yet a Bimbashi (captain), it happened one day that the commissary had to give each of the Bimbashis a tent. … I never had a master,

Alternatively, the remarkable common features in these accounts might suggest that what these European travelers were audience to constituted part of a scene/act that was well rehearsed and carefully produced. It is perhaps no accident that nearly all visitors start their accounts by describing the busy, loud and ornamented antechamber full of officials and members of the public coming mostly to present petitions to the Pasha. Then they give an account of the "presence-room", a grand hall "belle dans sa nudité" and bare of everything but a sofa in a corner of which sat a figure shrouded in shadows. During the ensuing conversation they were surprised to discover that the mysterious figure was none but the great Pasha himself, but since they could not see his face nor "detect the expression of his countenance," they were left literally in the dark.

Rather than give in to Mehmed Ali's manipulation, the shrewd visitor set out to demystify the mysterious Pasha and instead of starting his account with a description of the Pasha's physical features, he ends with it: … Mohammed Ali is a man of middling stature . . . His features . . . are plain, if not coarse; but they are lighted up with so much intelligence, and his dark eyes beam so brightly, that I should not be surprised if I found persons familiar with his countenance thought him handsome. In dress he differs but little, if at all, from any other Turkish gentleman; he has, however, a certain dignity in his manners which . . . borders upon majesty. But this dignity seems almost inseparable from the possession of power: the man who can do much good or harm, whatever may be his stature, form or features will always appear to exhibit it; as the scorpion, in size no larger than a snail, is viewed with awe, because he is supposed to carry death in his sting.

XREF: Connects with the earlier highlight on staging power through spectacle; here the Western eyewitness recounts — and inverts — that staged mystery. Pays off: "Pasha reception rituals staged power through deliberate shadow and spectacle."

This narration will not start at the beginning, as he would have liked, with his childhood in Albania or with his arrival in Egypt, or at the end, as some nationalist historians would have preferred, highlighting his showdown with Great Britain, but in the middle of his long career as governor of Egypt, and precisely in the year AH 1236/AD 1820–1. This is the year that Mehmed Ali started to found a modern army in Egypt, an army which was based on conscription and which relied on the institutions of the modern state that he founded mainly to serve that army. It is this army, rather than Mehmed Ali's character or his person, that is the subject of this book, and it is this central institution that is studied below in order to analyze the nature of Egyptian society in the first half of the nineteenth century.

DEFINE: This clarifies what the book's subject actually is: not Muhammad Ali the man but the conscription-based army as a central institution. Builds on: "Muhammad Ali's army forged the modern Egyptian nation through novel control practices."

In addition, the Pasha introduced a wide-ranging policy of monopolies whereby staple goods as well as cash crops were to be sold only to government warehouses and at prices fixed by the Pasha. As a result of these measures annual revenue increased from 8 million francs in 1805 to 50 million francs in 1821,30 allowing the Pasha to undertake projects that were not even conceivable in the long period of Ottoman rule.

DEFINE: Describes the Pasha's monopoly mechanism: goods sold only to government warehouses at fixed prices, which channeled trade profits to the state. Builds on: "Egyptian context explains the gap between plan and execution."

By the time Mehmed Ali started to found this army in 1820 he had already been occupying the prestigious and lucrative post of governor of Egypt on behalf of the Ottoman Sultan for fifteen years. During this long period he had managed to tighten Cairo’s control over the provinces by fighting corruption in the local bureaucracy, by conducting a cadastral survey (1813–14) that was crucial in abolishing the tax farming system (iltizām) and in the cancellation of the immunities on agricultural land belonging to mosques and pious foundations (awqāf), and, most importantly, by getting rid in the infamous Massacre of the Citadel (1811) of the power of the military landlords, the Mamluks, who had been in effective control of the province for centuries in spite of Ottoman legal suzerainty. Centralization of political and administrative control was also enhanced by a rapid increase in agricultural productivity based on an expansion of the cultivated area and an increase in the area of perennial irrigation.

Had the Pasha died in 1820, he would have been fifty years old and he would have already secured for himself a distinguished place in the history of Egypt and of the Ottoman Empire. He would have been known as the longest serving Ottoman governor of the province of Egypt, one who had managed to make its economy more efficient and to improve the performance of its bureaucracy. He would also have secured for himself the reputation among Egyptians of being one of the most brutal of the Ottoman governors who, through monopolies and corvée, had pushed them to unprecedented levels of poverty and misery.

Builds on: "State monopolies on staples multiplied Egypt's revenue sixfold."

For the Pasha had the good fortune to live for nearly another thirty years, during which time he introduced institutions and ushered in policies that make the already impressive policies of 1805–20 and the suffering they caused the Egyptians to fade by comparison. Two developments in particular assume gigantic proportions and mark 1821 as a crucial year in the Pasha’s career, namely the successful experimentation with the cultivation of long-staple cotton and the founding of a modern conscription-based army. While both these developments took place in the same year, there was no causal link between them. Nonetheless, from that time onwards very strong links existed between these two developments of the Pasha’s policies which proved to be the cornerstones of his entire regime: through cotton cultivation, which grew exponentially in the 1820s, the Pasha managed to reap unprecedented profits from its sale, which he then monopolized and used to construct his army, build his navy, establish his factories and construct numerous schools, hospitals and palaces.

Builds on: "Conscription and modern state institutions created Muhammad Ali's new army."

Moreover, using this army Mehmed Ali managed, albeit for a short period of time, to extend his control over wide areas of the Middle East including the Hijaz, the Sudan, Syria and parts of southern Anatolia, and naturally Egypt’s relationship with these areas changed radically.

Builds on: "Muhammad Ali's army forged the modern Egyptian nation through novel control practices."

The army occupied central stage among the Pasha’s numerous institutions and was the raison d’être of various other impressive institutions. For example, the many factories that were founded were intended mainly to produce commodities for the use of the army, which was their most important market. Similarly, most of the schools that were opened were aiming at graduating officers for the army. Likewise, the earliest modern hospitals to be built in Egypt were essentially military hospitals that were constructed near camps with high troop concentration. Moreover, the army, since it was a conscript army, changed the lives of thousands of Egyptians who were dragged into its service and radically changed the lives of their families who were often left behind trying to do their best after losing an important, if not also the primary, bread winner.

XREF: Connects to the earlier claims about cotton/state monopolies financing the army and the army changing peasant lives; this highlight shows the army as the organizing hub for other institutions, not just a consumer of them. Pays off: "Cotton cultivation and conscription together underpinned the Pasha's entire regime."

Through his various public projects – the opening of schools, the building of hospitals, the founding of factories and the creation of a modern army – the Pasha is seen not merely as having improved the finances of Egypt or as having enhanced the efficiency of the bureaucracy of Cairo, but as having laid the very foundation for a “national” take-off. These efforts at “modernization” on the part of the Pasha are usually portrayed as being part of a master-plan, a well-integrated scheme of development that was aimed not only at “modernizing” Egyptian society and transforming its economy, but also at gaining independence from Ottoman control from which it was believed to have been suffering for nearly three centuries.

Builds on: "Muhammad Ali's reign paradoxically joined efficient governance with brutal exploitation."

Having been deprived of its "colonies," and losing the army which constituted a large market for its products, the Egyptian factories found it difficult to produce commodities that could compete with foreign, mostly British, goods. In Egypt itself, local industries were closed down after losing their protective tariff barriers. At the same time foreign merchants flooded the Egyptian market with their cheap goods after the collapse of the Pasha's monopoly system. Soon afterwards they established financial houses and started extending numerous loans to members of the ruling family as well as to the rural population that triggered a debt spiral that forced Egypt to become more and more economically dependent on the West. Nearly thirty years after the death of Mehmed Ali a severe financial crisis offered a pretext for foreign intervention which eventually led to an invasion by British troops, thus effectively reducing Egypt to the position of a British protectorate and ushering in a period of military occupation that lasted for seventy years.

XREF: Connects to the earlier claims about Britain dismantling Muhammad Ali's development program and Palmerston's hostility as a commercial rival; this highlight shows the economic mechanism by which that rivalry produced dependency. Pays off: "Egyptian context explains the gap between plan and execution."

In this way one of the earliest, most ambitious development plans outside Europe came to a dramatic end. After being one of the first countries to promote industrialization outside Europe in a manner that "partly prefigured the models of state-induced growth championed by Japan and Czarist Russia during the latter half of the 19th century," Egypt was reduced to something like a mere colony of the British Empire. Not before another century had passed would Egypt witness any establishments of the size of those founded by Mehmed Ali.

Pays off: "Loss of trade protection forced Egypt into colonial dependency."

The problem with this argument insofar as it pertains to the army, besides the obvious one of lumping together the entire rural population of Egypt under the general rubric of "fellahin," is that the population of Egypt, far from enthusiastically flocking to serve in the army, was in fact very resentful of military service and strongly resisted serving in the army.

Builds on: "Egyptian context explains the gap between plan and execution."

This book challenges this powerful, monolithic discourse of Egyptian nationalism. It argues that the Pasha's army did indeed turn the population of Egypt into loyal and devoted citizens of Egypt. This it managed to do, however, not by "opening their eyes" to their true identities, or helping them to discover their hidden sentiments, but by subjecting them to a rigorous and tight disciplining regime whereby their bodies and minds were minutely controlled so that the Pasha and his elite could accomplish their own ambitions. In that sense the Pasha's army was crucial for "educating" the population of Egypt to believe that fighting for Mehmed Ali and his family was tantamount to giving one's life for the sake of the "nation," a nation that was now thought to have always already existed and which, moreover, demanded the sacrifices of its own citizens. In other words, this book tries to critique that powerful discourse of nationalism by challenging the assumptions on which it is based and specifically by arguing that the "Egyptian nation" was not a primordial, pre-existing entity waiting to be realized as argued in the nationalist discourse which claims to be only describing it, but that it was a product of that very same discourse which attempted to write it into being.

XREF: Connects to broader constructivist critiques of nationalism (e.g., Anderson's imagined communities, Hobsbawm's invented traditions), contrasting primordialist assumptions. Builds on: "Muhammad Ali's army forged the modern Egyptian nation through novel control practices."

In a similar fashion a recent study of the history of health care in nineteenth-century Egypt effectively dismisses the serious problems that the Pasha and his top medical advisors faced when they attempted to found a modern medical institution. These problems, it is argued, were practically and perceptively ironed out thanks to the Pasha's determination and genius; the study concludes by saying that it was only the advent of the British in 1882 that destroyed the indigenous health establishment by forcing it to shift from treating the local population to serving the much smaller and essentially elitist colonial community.

XREF: Builds on the earlier pattern of historians framing the Pasha's reforms as a coherent master-plan. Builds on: "Historians frame the Pasha's reforms as a coherent master-plan."

In a number of places this insistence on drawing clear boundaries around “Egypt” and on seeing it as a clearly identifiable entity within the Ottoman Empire when none existed leads Marsot to interpret certain documents in a most peculiar way as when, for example, she translates a key letter that Mehmed Ali sent to his agent in Istanbul, Najib Efendi, in 1827 at the height of the Greek War. In this letter the Pasha was contemplating the efforts he had made so far in helping his Sultan and was gloomily thinking of the prospect of fighting a combined European naval force that he would have little chance of defeating. “Here I am at a loss,” he said: “shall I be grieved at the calamity of the Sublime State (devlet-i aliyye) or at my own lost effort?” Instead of translating devlet-i aliyye as “the Sublime State,” the conventional term for the Ottoman Empire, Marsot in her citation of that letter translates it as “my country.” This particularly skewed reading of an important and telling document is partly due to the fact that Marsot seems to have been relying on an Arabic translation rather than the original Turkish text of the document. However, it is mostly due to a particular reading of Egyptian history and specifically of Mehmed Ali’s career, a reading that sees his reign as a chapter in the never-ending saga of Egypt’s struggle to express her true identity.

XREF: Builds on earlier claims that "Egypt" as a nation is a nineteenth-century construct (loc 41) and that historians frame the Pasha's reforms as a coherent master-plan (loc 77). This highlight exposes the same anachronistic projection operating at the level of translation. Builds on: "Historians frame the Pasha's reforms as a coherent master-plan."

Rather than viewing Mehmed Ali as a national or proto-national hero, the present book argues that the Pasha did have ambivalent feelings towards both his Egyptian subjects and his Ottoman Sultan not because he was suffering from an identity crisis caused by the fact that he was an Albanian who “had no cultural identity other than the Ottoman one,” causing him to have a “love-hate relationship with the Ottomans and [to fear] a loss of identity,” but because of his untenable position within the Ottoman Empire. For it was the Pasha's desire to carve out an empire for himself at the expense of the Sultan's own empire, an act that could only be seen as one of rebellion and aggression, and at the same time his desire to be forgiven by the Sultan that caused the Pasha's conflicting “psychological” problems.

In contrast to the nationalists' insistence on the pure essence of the Egyptian nation that led to the easy dismissal of three centuries of Egypt's history as unworthy of study, scholars are now taking this long period more seriously, seeing in it a lively and vibrant society. A good example is Ehud Toledano's State and Society in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Egypt which seeks to challenge the notion that Egypt constituted a distinct entity within the Ottoman Empire and instead stresses the Ottoman nature of Egypt during the nineteenth century.

XREF: Builds on the theme at loc 103 about nationalist distortion of Ottoman-era history; this highlight offers the corrective view. Builds on: "Nationalist lens distorts historians' translation of Ottoman-era documents."

Toledano rightly points out one of the most important characteristics of the upper echelons of Egyptian society in the nineteenth century, namely the fact that its members had more in common with the urban elite members of other provinces of the Ottoman Empire than with the Arabic-speaking inhabitants of the province they were ruling.

XREF: Builds directly on loc 106's earlier claim that Ottoman-era Egypt was a vibrant society embedded in empire, specifying that even the ruling class was Ottoman-identified. DEFINE: Rebrackets 'Upper Egyptian society' as an Ottoman, not national-Arab, category. Builds on: "Ottoman-era Egypt was a vibrant society embedded in empire."

More problematic is the insufficient attention given in Toledano's account of the people at these uneasy peripheries, these borders separating the two groups one from the other. Scribes, guards, lower-ranking government bureaucrats, non-commissioned officers, nurses and servants: these are examples of people who stood at the peripheries of these two groups and facilitated the communication and the interaction between their respective members.

XREF: Connects to the earlier claim about Egypt's elite belonging to the Ottoman world rather than to Egypt — both concern boundary-crossing figures who complicate the two-group binary. Builds on: "Ottoman-era Egypt was a vibrant society embedded in empire."

Mehmed Ali's army did not function only through the insightful command of its commanders or the heroic sacrifices of its soldiers; it also functioned with the help of hundreds of scribes and officials who manned the bureaucracy that supplied and fed it, through the efforts of the often bilingual non-commissioned officers who mediated between the officers and the men they commanded, of the hundreds of nurses who administered to the health of the sick and wounded and who translated the commands of their doctors to them, and finally of the numerous sentries who guarded the gates and fences of the barracks and camps to make sure that military discipline was enforced as intended by the senior officers.

XREF: Builds on the earlier claim about peripheral intermediaries enabling communication between colonizers and colonized; this highlight extends that insight to the army's everyday functioning. Builds on: "Peripheral intermediaries enabled communication between Egypt's colonizers and colonized."

For him the colonization of Egypt is not to be understood in the traditional manner of the process of structuring Egyptian society after the British military takeover in 1882. Rather, it was a process that had started much earlier and which entailed the complete restructuring of Egyptian society – the government bureaucracy, the military, the schools, cities, towns, streets, houses, families and the body of the individual – in such a way that made Egypt not only more profitable, more productive, but also represented the country in a manner that produced the same division of the world into two domains that had been accomplished earlier in Europe and which made it more accessible to European control.

XREF: Challenges the periodization implied in earlier claims about Muhammad Ali's modernization as an independent Egyptian project (loc 23, 70). Pays off: "Muhammad Ali's army forged the modern Egyptian nation through novel control practices."

Specifically, it is concerned with the question of whether discrepancies arose as a result of misreadings of the law by government officials, scribes or bureaucrats, whether they were caused by internal contradictions in the letter of the law itself that could only (or more easily) be detected on implementation, or whether they were the result of resistance by those on whom the law was applied.

DEFINE: Frameworks the analytical question distinguishing misreading, internal contradiction, and resistance as separate origins of implementation gaps.

Second, all modern armies are a microcosm of their larger societies in a crucial sense: by erecting and maintaining clear distinctions (in dress, pay, rights and duties) between soldiers and officers and in sharpening distinctions within each group by an elaborate hierarchical structure, armies reflect the class divisions within society at large.

This sharp stratification was even more apparent in the case of Mehmed Ali's army than with most other contemporary armies since the officer corps was ethnically and linguistically different from the overwhelming majority of the soldiery. Studying the internal relationship between soldiers and officers within that army, therefore, allows us to see how a representative proportion of the masses dealt with members of the elite and how these conflictual boundaries between the Turkish-speaking elite and the Arabic-speaking lower classes were constantly fought and challenged.

XREF: Connects to the earlier claim that armies mirror society's class structure internally (loc 118) — this highlight unpacks how that internal mirroring in Mehmed Ali's army specifically ran along ethnic-linguistic lines. Builds on: "Armies mirror their society's class structure internally."

European nation-states came into being not only through the spread of nationalist feelings and sentiments but also through the states' monopoly of means of violence and their amassing of administrative and military measures that enabled them to extend their authority and control over remote regions in a permanent and stable manner.

XREF: Connects to earlier claims about Muhammad Ali's state-building through conscription, monopolies, and centralization — this generalizes the pattern into a theory of European nation-state formation. Builds on: "Conscription and modern state institutions created Muhammad Ali's new army."

This chapter concludes by analyzing the ambivalent “Peace of Kütahia” that ended this first round of military confrontation between Mehmed Ali and Sultan Mahmud II.

Builds on: "Muhammad Ali's army briefly extended Egyptian control across the eastern Mediterranean."

It concentrates on the Syrian campaign (1831–40), being one of the Pasha's best organized military ventures. Chapter 1 argues that this campaign differed from other campaigns both in its causes and in the manner in which it was conducted.

It starts with an analysis of the regime of isolation and surveillance that was intended to mark off life on the training camps from civilian life outside the camps. It also seeks to contrast the new military legal codes that were intended to discipline the new recruits with civil laws that were applied in the countryside and to see how the army could be looked to as the kind of model for society to follow.

DEFINE: Defines the analytical framework: isolation/surveillance regime and distinct military legal codes mark training camps off from civilian life. Builds on: "Army discipline manufactured Egyptians' national identity rather than revealing it."

Chapter 4 opens with a description of a key battle that Mehmed Ali's army fought, the battle of Konia against the Ottoman army (December 1832). Although the Egyptian army had a decisive victory in that battle, it was discovered that serious mistakes were committed by a leading brigadier who participated in the battle and whose performance comes somewhat as a surprise after reading the laws, regulations and training manuals reviewed so far.

Having recently won the title of King, Fouad was keen not only in portraying the history of his family in a positive light, but also in highlighting the fact that his was an independent royal family right from his great-grandfather's time. He thus invited a number of historians to come and work on a highly selected group of his family's papers, which became the nucleus of the Royal Archives of Egypt that was housed in 'Abdīn Palace, the precursor of the present Egyptian National Archives. Not only was this a selected group of documents, they were also slightly edited on being translated from the original Ottoman Turkish to Arabic.

QUESTION: How far did Fouad's curation and editing shape what Egyptian national archives preserve today? XREF: Connects to the earlier claim that nationalist lens distorts historians' translation of Ottoman-era documents — here the distortion enters at the archival creation stage itself. Builds on: "Nationalist lens distorts historians' translation of Ottoman-era documents."

Alarmed at the spectacular success of the advance of Ibrahim's army into Syria, the Sultan sent a special emissary to Alexandria in an attempt to persuade Mehmed Ali to pull back his forces and to warn him that if he did not comply, then a huge army of newly trained nizami troops would be assembled against his son's forces. When it became clear that the Egyptian Pasha had no intention of pulling back his forces, the Porte ordered the Syrian valis to raise men and send them to Aleppo in preparation for fighting Ibrahim's troops. Mehmed Pasha, deputy of the vali of Aleppo, was given the title of Serasker (Commander-in-Chief) of Syria and Arabia and was entrusted with heading this force that it was hoped would stop the advance of the Egyptian army.

Builds on: "The Peace of Kütahia ended Egypt's first direct confrontation with the sultan."

Reviewing the Pasha's position from the time of starting hostilities until their cessation can illustrate this point further. After sending his troops to Syria and after undertaking what could only be taken as a blatant act of rebellion against the authority of the Sultan, Mehmed Ali was still hoping to acquire Syria and to be pardoned by Mahmud at the same time. Documents abound showing how Mehmed Ali in 1832 still thought that he could get away with his act and that he could, in effect, both have his cake and eat it too. While besieging the fortress of Acre for eight months during which numerous letters were sent from Istanbul urging him to desist and warning him of the consequences if he did not, he was still pleading for forgiveness from the Sultan and asking to be given Syria without being declared a rebel.

Builds on: "Egyptian context explains the gap between plan and execution."

Most communications with Egypt were by sea where the Egyptian navy had a comfortable command over the waters of the eastern Mediterranean. Confronted with these defeats Sultan Mahmud II decided to raise yet another army in an attempt to “arrest the progress of an army whose success endangered the stability of his throne.” He therefore summoned the Sadrazam Mehmed Raşid Pasha (an ally and protégé of Husrev) and entrusted him with raising a new army from different provinces of the Empire. Towards the end of October 1832 the Sadrazam was able to raise a formidable army composed of 80,000 men divided into four major sections.

Builds on: "Ottoman sultan resisted Egypt's Syrian expansion with armed threats."

Although John Barker, the British Consul-General during the Syrian campaign, “was always opposed” to the Pasha's policy towards the Sultan, the “British Cabinet did not declare its policy, and Mr. Barker did not receive from home any instructions favorable to Meh'med Ali's projects.” Mehmed Ali knew that the messages he was receiving from Barker were the Consul's own personal opinions and Palmerston, the British Foreign Secretary, who was later adamant in upholding the principle of preserving the integrity of the Ottoman Empire, was completely silent on the issue of his struggle with the Sultan.

Builds on: "Egyptian context explains the gap between plan and execution."

It is important to note, however, that the “peace of Kütahia” was not a permanent settlement, it was not a peace treaty but an agreement between Mahmud II and Mehmed Ali to end the state of war that had existed between them for over a year. Rather than finding his position more secure than before the campaign had started, the Pasha soon discovered that his osensibly improved status was dependent on an annual renewal by the Sultan, and was thus subject to his whims and to the intrigues of various courtiers in Istanbul. For after all, Mehmed Ali was not granted an independent status that would be recognized by the European powers and hence the agreement did not secure for him “the much desired legal independence as a sovereign” that he had been supposedly fighting for.

XREF: Builds on the earlier claim that the Peace of Kütahia ended Egypt's first direct confrontation with the sultan (loc 121), extending it by showing the settlement's fragility and non-permanent character. Builds on: "The Peace of Kütahia ended Egypt's first direct confrontation with the sultan."

However, in his negotiations with Halil Pasha, Mehmed Ali did not raise the issue of independence; again it was Ibrahim who was urging his father to do so. Mehmed Ali started asking for independence only in 1838; back in 1833 he could still not think of himself as being outside of Ottoman authority altogether.

XREF: Extends the theme of Mehmed Ali's ambivalence as strategic rather than deep-seated — he still saw himself within Ottoman authority in 1833. Builds on: "Ambivalence toward sultan reflected strategic rebellion, not identity crisis."

Specifically, it was concerning the manner of conducting the war against the Greek rebels in the Morea that the Pasha discovered that it was impossible to collaborate with the Ottomans in any future wars. The story of Mehmed Ali's involvement in the Morean war goes back to 1824 when an imperial order was dispatched to Egypt appointing Mehmed Ali to deal with the Greek uprising. Five months later the Pasha sent a force a force comprising 17,000 newly trained infantry troops and 700 cavalrymen assisted by four artillery batteries to the Morean peninsula in the south of Greece. These were four of the first six regiments that had been recently trained, and as far as the Pasha was concerned the Morean theater of operations provided a good opportunity to try them out, checking how loyal, disciplined and well trained they were. The new regiments were very successful and “caused as much alarm by defeating the Greeks as the Sultan had done by failing to do so.”

Builds on: "Conscription and modern state institutions created Muhammad Ali's new army."

In fact, when something resembling this assessment was carried out it was to show that the costs of maintaining the army in the annexed provinces far outweighed the revenue accruing from them. With regard to the economic benefits of the occupation of Syria, for example, which was arguably the wealthiest and most productive province that Mehmed Ali annexed, it was eventually realized that there were serious problems in reaping the economic fruits of the occupation. It was suggested, for example, that in an attempt to “increase the productivity” of the province the local peasants should be given the freedom to plant whichever commodities they wanted. Towards the end of the occupation when these problems were still being strongly felt, Ibrahim suggested to his father that taxes be reduced so as to encourage people to be more productive. Mehmed Ali responded by saying that “to increase our revenues we should [encourage the population to] work harder rather than lower our taxes.” He added that he could not accept that the tax burden on the Syrians was heavy since “what we have taken is like an ear from a camel. We should have done as the Europeans do and collected [a flat rate] of 5 percent.” This was after he had received conclusive and clear reports confirming what has been feared all along, namely, that the cost of maintaining the army in Syria was not covered by the revenue raised there.

By the mid-1830s the Pasha had carved a small empire for himself at the expense of the Sultan's own dominions. After firmly entrenching himself in Egypt he extended his control to Syria, the Hijaz, the Sudan, Crete and most of Yemen and Eastern Arabia, that is, most of the Sultan's Arabic-speaking lands and some of his wealthiest provinces. Having wiped out two huge armies that the Sultan had mustered to confront him with, his forces then penetrated the heartland of the Ottoman Empire, Anatolia, and threatened the capital itself.

Builds on: "Muhammad Ali's army briefly extended Egyptian control across the eastern Mediterranean."

Studies of Mehmed Ali almost invariably proceed in a chronological order following him as he conducts one campaign after the other, starting with his early expedition against the Wahhabis in the Hijaz (1811–18), then tracking him to the Sudan (1820–22), from there to the Morea (1824–27), and ending with his climactic confrontation with the Sultan and the European powers in his most ambitious and significant campaign in Syria (1831–41). Portrayed in this chronological manner Mehmed Ali's career immediately seems consistent, purposeful and progressing teleologically towards a climactic, well-thought-out goal, which Egyptian historians have consistently argued to be the seeking of independence from the Ottoman Empire. At the heart of these narrations and occupying central stage (sometimes literally as was shown in the Introduction above) Mehmed Ali appears as a solitary, romantic hero who was ahead of his time, little understood by his own people and betrayed by his allies, but who, through perseverance, persistence and insight was determined to fulfill his civilizing mission of pushing Egypt into the modern age and of lifting her out of what is perceived as centuries of Ottoman stagnation, tyranny and oppression.

XREF: Builds on the earlier claim (loc 77) that historians frame the Pasha's reforms as a coherent master-plan; this highlight shows the narrative technique (chronology) that produces that impression, extending it to his military campaigns and the teleological independence goal. Builds on: "Historians frame the Pasha's reforms as a coherent master-plan."

The Hijaz campaign, for example, besides being a response to the Sultan's order to subdue the Wahhabi rebellion, is seen as serving a number of the Pasha's own aims. Among these were the desire to get rid of the turbulent and undisciplined mamluk and Albanian troops in his army, the hope to get Syria as a reward for helping the Sultan in his war against the Wahhabi rebels, and the desire to win fame and prestige in the Muslim world for capturing the holy cities of Islam from the rebellious Wahhabis who were seen in Istanbul as heretics and whose rising power in Arabia had allegedly caused the annual pilgrimage to cease.

Pays off: "Chronological narratives fabricate a purposeful arc in Mehmed Ali's career."

The Sudan campaign is considered to have provided the Pasha with an opportunity to rid himself of even more of the undisciplined and quarrelsome Albanian troops who had survived the Wahhabi wars. The Pasha might also have been lured by the alleged abundance of rich gold mines in Sinnār. More important was the need to conscript the black Sudanese in the army he was contemplating and which he had already undertaken the first steps to create. Finally, Mehmed Ali was also eager to be rid of the remnant of the mamluk forces who had taken refuge in Dongola and whom he considered a constant source of menace.

XREF: Mirrors the same multi-aim logic identified for the Hijaz campaign at loc 192. Builds on: "The Hijaz campaign served multiple hidden aims beyond suppressing Wahhabis."

On the one hand, Mehmed Ali felt that after all the help he afforded to the Porte in subduing both the Wahhabi and Greek revolts he was entitled to a handsome reward, and during the Morean war he had, in fact, asked for the four pashalɩks of Syria to be given to him as that most coveted reward. Once the Morean war was over, however, it became clear that the Sultan (under the influence of Mehmed Ali's arch-enemy, Husrev Pasha) decided to turn down the Pasha's request and Mehmed Ali was determined to take by force what, by then, he considered to be rightly his.

Builds on: "Ottoman sultan resisted Egypt's Syrian expansion with armed threats."

The question of whether the wars that the governor of Egypt waged during the first third of the nineteenth century were dynastic wars of imperialistic expansion or national wars of independence is central to understanding the whole of Mehmed Ali's career and, indeed, of the history of Egypt during his reign. If, as Toledano argues, Egypt was very much an Ottoman province, ruled by an Ottoman–Egyptian elite, then Marsot's claim that, unlike contemporary Ottoman notables "who had merely sought quasi-independence for their provinces but were content to remain within the empire, Muhammad Ali sought independence," has to be qualified. For even if it is granted that Mehmed Ali was seeking to get rid of the "Ottoman yoke" right from the beginning of his career, the question remains as to the nature of this independence. Could it be viewed as similar to the independence sought by the Greeks during their War of Independence when large sections of the population rose against their Ottoman rulers? Or is it more plausible to link Mehmed Ali's wars, as Shaw does, with a series of internal wars within the Ottoman Empire that were waged by local governors against central government control? If so, Mehmed Ali would appear, like Ali Pasha of Janina, Davud Pasha of Baghdad, or Amir Bashir of Lebanon as a local governor of an Ottoman province who seized the opportunity of the difficulties that the Ottoman Sultan was facing both internally and externally to try and expand his own local dominions. The reason why he succeeded where most of these local governors failed is seen as stemming from the fact that he managed to prepare for his military ventures by a complete and thorough reorganization of the province's economic, administrative and, above all, military systems.

XREF: Directly engages the historiographical debate named earlier at loc 103 about nationalist lenses distorting Ottoman-era interpretations. Also builds on loc 104's ambivalence toward the sultan. Builds on: "Ambivalence toward sultan reflected strategic rebellion, not identity crisis."

But to argue that these considerations were decisive in shaping Mehmed Ali's policy of expansion is to ignore the fact that two of these campaigns were ordered by his Sultan, and that Mehmed Ali agreed to comply with these orders only reluctantly and after considerable hesitation. Moreover, that some economic benefits could be reaped from annexing a certain province does not mean that military occupation was cost-free, and neither Marsot nor Lawson show anything resembling a calculated economic assessment done by Mehmed Ali or Ibrahim weighing the costs and the benefits of military annexation. In fact, when something resembling this assessment was carried out it was to show that the costs of maintaining the army in the annexed provinces far outweighed the revenue accruing from them.

QUESTION: This counters economic-determinist readings of Mehmed Ali's expansion, since no cost-benefit analysis preceded his campaigns. Builds on: "Ottoman sultan resisted Egypt's Syrian expansion with armed threats."

Marsot, in contrast, does not see that Mehmed Ali was blindly driven toward expansion, and argues that his expansionary policy could best be understood in economic terms. "The value of conquest [did not lie] in conquest itself. It was always posited in terms of what conquest could add to Egypt's financial situation . . . Expansion was economic planning carried out by other means." This argument, however, raises more questions than it seeks to answer. Although it is true that the economic growth that Egypt witnessed during Mehmed Ali's reign required finding markets, the Egyptian market, as Marsot herself states, was far from saturated. That there were economic benefits to be gained by military expansion does not necessarily mean that these economic benefits were the reason behind such expansion.

QUESTION: A methodologically important point: post hoc economic benefits don't establish causal intentions. Worth pressing further on what evidence would actually distinguish motive from outcome. Builds on: "Historians debate whether Mehmed Ali's wars sought independence or imperial expansion."

With regard to the economic benefits of the occupation of Syria, for example, which was arguably the wealthiest and most productive province that Mehmed Ali annexed, it was eventually realized that there were serious problems in reaping the economic fruits of the occupation. It was suggested, for example, that in an attempt to "increase the productivity" of the province the local peasants should be given the freedom to plant whichever commodities they wanted. Towards the end of the occupation when these problems were still being strongly felt, Ibrahim suggested to his father that taxes be reduced so as to encourage people to be more productive. Mehmed Ali responded by saying that "to increase our revenues we should [encourage the population to] work harder rather than lower our taxes." He added that he could not accept that the tax burden on the Syrians was heavy since "what we have taken is like an ear from a camel. We should have done as the Europeans do and collected [a flat rate] of 5 percent." This was after he had received conclusive and clear reports confirming what has been feared all along, namely, that the cost of maintaining the army in Syria was not covered by the revenue raised there.

Builds on: "Ottoman sultan resisted Egypt's Syrian expansion with armed threats."

Second, a thorough analysis of the links between the military and the economy should be carried out. To explain how the Syrian war differed from the Sudan campaign, for example, one has to explain how it was possible to create the economic infrastructure that enabled a fifty-thousand-troop army36 stationed hundreds of miles away from home to be well fed, adequately clothed and regularly paid. This, in turn, necessitates understanding how the economy was run and knowing what links existed between economic needs and military expansion.

XREF: Relates to earlier claims about how cotton profits and monopolies financed the army, and how economic infrastructure underpinned military expansion. Builds on: "Mehmed Ali weighed expansion costs only after conquering provinces."

Unlike other provinces that Mehmed Ali conquered, there are various incidents that show the Pasha’s very early interest in Syria, and there is enough evidence to show that out of all the provinces he eventually occupied, Syria was the one he most coveted and that he had his eye on it, as it were, right from the beginning of his career. Indeed, one can view the enormous military build-up since the early 1820s as preparing the way for the invasion of Syria, an operation that, by its own nature, had to wait for the opportune moment to be launched.

Pays off: "Mehmed Ali's denied Syrian reward precipitated his military seizure."

As early as 1810 Mehmed Ali showed his interest in the neighboring province and his willingness to interfere in its internal affairs, as well as his ability to influence developments there to suit his interests. Capitalizing on the enmity between Süleyman Pasha, the vali of Sidon, and Yusuf Genç Pasha, the vali of Damascus, Mehmed Ali decided to side with the latter and mediated with the Sublime Porte to reinstate him in his pashalɩks. He wrote various letters to the Sublime Porte and to his agent in Istanbul, Najib Efendi, insinuating that he would not dispatch his almost ready campaign to the Hijaz unless Yusuf Genç were reinstated in his post, and adding that he was insisting on this demand "not out of personal reasons but to facilitate the Hijaz affair." Mehmed Ali finally succeeded in his demands and his friend was pardoned although he was not reappointed to his pashalɩks. He spent the last six years of his life in Egypt.

XREF: Builds on the earlier claim that the Hijaz campaign served multiple hidden aims beyond suppressing Wahhabis (loc 192). This shows he also used it as bargaining leverage for Syrian ambitions. Builds on: "The Hijaz campaign served multiple hidden aims beyond suppressing Wahhabis."

Mehmed Ali still had his eye fixed on Syria, though, and on several occasions he asked to be given the eyalet of Damascus in addition to that of Egypt. In 1812, for example, he spoke to the British consul about his designs on the area. The following year while his forces were having difficulties trying to subdue the Wahhabis in Arabia, he wrote to the Sadrazam telling him that he could offset the reverses suffered by his army in Arabia only if he was given the eyalet of Sham (i.e. Damascus) in addition to Egypt. Two years later he repeated the same request. When his supply lines got longer and longer in his war against the Wahhabis and in order to prepare for the final attack on the Saudi capital, Dar‘iyya, it was realized at least 20,000 camels were required, only 3,000 of which had been secured from Syria in spite of repeated promises of help from the vali of Damascus.

Builds on: "Syria was Mehmed Ali's most coveted province from early on."

This old and deep seated interest in Syria and Syrian affairs had its reasons. In the first place, Syria was famous for its raw materials, most importantly, its wood and timber that was in abundant supply in the woods of its northernmost regions. The Pasha, very conscious of the fact that Egypt lacked wood, took various measures to encourage the fellahin to plant trees. However, he was also aware that no matter how successful he was in this respect, the quality of wood grown in Egypt was not as good as that imported from abroad. He thus undertook to import wood from any place he could find it, be it from the Sudan, Cyprus, Greece, Anatolia, or Europe.

Builds on: "Syria was Mehmed Ali's most coveted province from early on."

This desperate need for wood was necessitated by the need to build a formidable fleet and, to a lesser extent, to provide the "factories" with a reliable supply of fuel. Given its large wooded areas, Syria was an attractive region, especially in light of its proximity to Egypt which reduced transportation costs. Furthermore, because it had extensive forest lands Syria was producing different kinds of wood that were suitable for the Pasha’s various needs. In a clear reference to its importance in this respect Ibrahim wrote to his father in the wake of the negotiations that eventually led to the "peace of Kütahia" in 1833 telling him that out of all lands in their possession they must not give up the three districts of Alaiye (Alanya), Adalia (Antalia) and Içel (Cilicia), all on the south coast of Anatolia.

XREF: Builds directly on loc 213 about Syria's strategic value lying in wood and timber, adding the specific concrete needs (shipbuilding and factory fuel) and naming the exact districts. Builds on: "Syria's strategic value to Egypt lay in its wood and timber."

As for demanding these regions [he explained,] it is based on the fact that they are well-wooded regions, and verily the nation that possesses no timbered land will find excessive difficulty in maintaining her fleet. All this is self-evident. As you know, England is a poorly wooded country, and when it sought to obtain timber from Austria, the latter country rejected the request. Indeed, Egypt is in the same position. In confirmation of my suggestion is the instruction I previously received from you in which you said, "My son, give as much care to the matter of timber as you would to crippling the army of Constantinople."

Builds on: "Egypt's southern Anatolian districts supplied timber for the fleet and factories."

With a population said to be around two million people, it was very attractive for the Pasha to contemplate using its manpower. As early as 1825 he is said to have had in mind the possibility of conscripting the inhabitants of Mount Lebanon who were reputed to make brave and strong soldiers.

The reason for this mutual mistrust and apprehension goes back to the very early years of Mehmed Ali's governorship. The previous Sultan, Sultan Selim III, did not forget the fact that Mehmed Ali was only installed in the pashalɩks of Egypt against his imperial wish. During the power struggle in 1803–5 Mehmed Ali proved himself to be the most capable commander among the various warring factions in that relatively remote but significantly wealthy province of the Empire, and the Sultan had to accept grudgingly the fact that Mehmed Ali did indeed control matters in Cairo whether he liked it or not. Jealous of his power and afraid of his influence and the possibility of his secession, the Sultan attempted to transfer Mehmed Ali to the pashalɩks of Salonika in 1806 only one year after he had been invested in the eyalet of Egypt.

XREF: Connects to the earlier theme of Mehmed Ali's ambivalence toward the sultan and their adversarial relations (loc 182). Builds on: "Ottoman sultan resisted Egypt's Syrian expansion with armed threats."

After Mehmed Ali's forces succeeded in capturing the cities of Mecca and Medina from the Wahhabis he sent one of his mamluks, a certain Latif Ağa, to Istanbul to present the keys of both cities to the Sultan as a sign of obedience and servitude. During his stay in Istanbul, however, Latif Ağa was given the title of Pasha and encouraged to rebel against his master in Egypt. On his return to Cairo rumors were circulating that he had returned armed with a firman to depose Mehmed Ali and to replace him as vali of Egypt. Mehmed Ali, who was in Arabia at this time overseeing the campaign against the Wahhabis, was informed of this conspiracy at the last moment by his friend and deputy, Mehmed Lazoğlu, and hurried back to Egypt to attend personally to that challenge to his authority. He arrived too late, however, to take personal revenge against Latif Pasha whom Mehmed Lazoğlu had summarily beheaded at the foot of the Citadel.

XREF: Builds on the earlier claim (loc 218) that the sultan distrusted Mehmed Ali from the outset; this conspiracy confirms that distrust escalated into active plotting. QUESTION: How did Mehmed Ali's depose-and-console strategy co-exist with the sultan actually orchestrating his replacement? Builds on: "The sultan distrusted Mehmed Ali from the outset and resented his install."

When Mahmud succeeded decisively in getting rid of the power of the Janissaries in June of 1826 he summoned Mehmed Najib Efendi, Mehmed Ali's agent, and asked him to write to the Pasha in Cairo requesting his help in founding a new nizami army. He explained that it was due to Mehmed Ali, after all, "that we saw the importance of training the troops along modern lines." Nagib Efendi wrote to the Pasha asking him to dispatch instructors who had been drilled in his army to train the imperial army. Although the Sultan gave Mehmed Ali the credit for initiating such important reforms, the Pasha refused to help his Sultan giving such excuses as the fact that the officers in his army were better paid than Ottoman officers and that this might cause friction and envy between them.

Being an Ottoman governor himself, and realizing how serious the situation of the Empire had become in his time, the Pasha was sharing feelings with other nineteenth-century Ottoman reformers concerning the urgency of instituting an ambitious reform program in the Empire. The problem, however, lay in the fact that whereas the changes that these reformers were contemplating and which Mahmud II was spearheading meant, among other things, strengthening the central government's authority over that of the provinces, Mehmed Ali's reforms in Egypt meant exactly the opposite. For what Mehmed Ali had managed to accomplish was to create another center within the Empire that rivaled Istanbul in its ability to control neighboring provinces and, in effect, challenged its superiority as a leading political center in the Empire. And in that sense Mahmud II and Mehmed Ali were essentially rivals.

Specifically, it was concerning the manner of conducting the war against the Greek rebels in the Morea that the Pasha discovered that it was impossible to collaborate with the Ottomans in any future wars.

Pays off: "Ottoman sultan resisted Egypt's Syrian expansion with armed threats."

Regarding the present situation there are two issues worth thinking of. The first is that the moves of the Europeans are merely a bluff; the second is that the fleets will, in fact, try to intercept our navies. If they are only bluffing then this is exactly what we want . . . However, you know well that when those who take charge of states and kingdoms confront such issues, they anticipate the worst outcome rather than [simply] hoping for the best. If, therefore, the Europeans are not bluffing . . . then we have to realize that we cannot stand up against them, and the only possible outcome [if we do so] will be sinking the entire fleet and causing the death of up to 30 or 40 thousand men . . . Then it will be said that Mehmed Ali Pasha was the cause of this disaster and my name will always be stained with such a disgrace . . . Taking the responsibility of wasting thirty or forty thousand lives is no easy task. I have, therefore, stopped sending letters to my son encouraging him to fight on. Wars are not won only by depending on God and trusting in Him, but also by putting all possible human effort into it. God has ordered us in His Book [not only] to stand up to the enemy [but also] to spare no effort in confronting him. This, however, necessitates a thorough knowledge of the art of war. Unfortunately, my dear friend, although we are men of war (ehlli harbdan), yet we are still in the A B of that art (alif ba), whereas the Europeans are way ahead of us and have put their theories [about war] into practice . . . [Contemplating all of this] one thinks of accepting the lesser of two evils, namely, the principle of independence [for the Greeks] and [conducting it through] Austrian mediation. This will mean unfortunately that . . . all the effort and money that I have put into this affair will have been wasted together with my soldiers and officers . . . Here I am at a loss: shall I be grieved at the calamity of the Sublime State (devlet-i aliyye) or at my lost effort? I am, therefore, most sorrowful and anguished.

And it was lost not through any negligence or misconduct on his part but because of the “obstinate and arrogant refusal of the Porte to accept European mediation” in the whole issue of Greek independence. This intransigent position on the part of the Porte did not change after Navarino: the Porte refused to hear of any requests by Ibrahim to withdraw to Egypt and instead kept on pressing on him the importance of holding on to all territories under his control as well as initiating further campaigns against the Christian population in the Morean peninsula and, if need be, to burn all villages on his way. Mehmed Ali refused to listen to these stubborn and unrealistic demands of the Porte and proceeded to sign a treaty with the European powers guaranteeing the safety of his son’s withdrawal from the Greek mainland. Moreover, and this must have been felt more heartily, the Sultan refused to give Mehmed Ali Syria as he had hoped and instead gave him the island of Crete to govern, an island he had already captured and which was in a constant state of rebellion since the start of the Greek revolution. Furthermore, its resources and importance were not to be compared to those of Syria. Never again would he accept the docile role that was expected of him and he would always be on the look-out for any pretext to take what he had been coveting for a long time: Syria.

Builds on: "Mehmed Ali's denied Syrian reward precipitated his military seizure."

In this candid letter Mehmed Ali was clever enough to know that the Europeans were not bluffing. Moreover, besides being clear that the outcome of any confrontation would be grave, he came very close to anticipating the magnitude of the horrible disaster that befell the combined Ottoman–Egyptian fleet in Navarino on 20 October 1827.96 In less than three hours the entire Ottoman fleet was lost and most of the ships of the Egyptian fleet were either sunk or burnt. This was the fleet that Mehmed Ali had gone to great lengths to buy and improve, and it was the fleet that he used to boast about acquiring saying that the world of Islam had never witnessed anything like it. And it was lost not through any negligence or misconduct on his part but because of the “obstinate and arrogant refusal of the Porte to accept European mediation” in the whole issue of Greek independence. This intransigent position on the part of the Porte did not change after Navarino: the Porte refused to hear of any requests by Ibrahim to withdraw to Egypt and instead kept on pressing on him the importance of holding on to all territories under his control as well as initiating further campaigns against the Christian population in the Morean peninsula and, if need be, to burn all villages on his way. Mehmed Ali refused to listen to these stubborn and unrealistic demands of the Porte and proceeded to sign a treaty with the European powers guaranteeing the safety of his son’s withdrawal from the Greek mainland.

XREF: Connects to loc 226 on the Greek campaign poisoning Ottoman-Egyptian cooperation — Navarino is the decisive naval catastrophe of that campaign.

When it became clear that the Egyptian Pasha had no intention of pulling back his forces, the Porte ordered the Syrian valis to raise men and send them to Aleppo in preparation for fighting Ibrahim’s troops. Mehmed Pasha, deputy of the vali of Aleppo, was given the title of Serasker (Commander-in-Chief) of Syria and Arabia and was entrusted with heading this force that it was hoped would stop the advance of the Egyptian army. Furthermore, on 3 March 1832 the annual tevcihat (imperial appointments to the posts of provincial governors) were announced leaving the positions of the governors of the eyalets of Egypt, Jedda and Crete vacant until Mehmed Ali and Ibrahim should respond positively to the Porte’s request to withdraw. When this failed, a fetva (religious edict) was issued, in effect, excommunicating both Mehmed Ali and Ibrahim Pasha and appointing in their respective pashalɩks Hüseyin Pasha, the destroyer of the Janissaries, who was then Governor of Edirne. In addition, the same Pasha was appointed head of the Ottoman forces in Anatolia with the task of joining Mehmed Pasha of Aleppo and preparing jointly the task of stopping Ibrahim Pasha.

DEFINE: The passage explains the Ottoman functions of tevcihat (imperial provincial appointments) and fetva (religious edict of excommunication) as instruments of political pressure. Builds on: "The sultan actively conspired to depose Mehmed Ali from afar."

In the meantime the Egyptian forces were busily tightening the siege on the city of Acre, a city which had withstood Napoleon’s siege thirty-two years earlier. After a period of nearly six months the city finally fell on 27 May 1832.121 Ibrahim then proceeded northward to capture Damascus, which city he entered on 16 June 1832.122 He then rushed further north to meet Mehmed Pasha’s army before he could be joined by Hüseyin Pasha. He succeeded in doing so and met Mehmed Pasha who was heading an army composed of four infantry regiments, three cavalry regiments and 15,000 irregulars. A fierce battle took place near Horns on 8 July 1832 and ended with the defeat of Mehmed Pasha’s army. Around 2,000 of his men were killed and between 2,500 and 3,000 were taken prisoners as well as all his ammunition, tents and twenty-four cannons.

Builds on: "Mehmed Ali's denied Syrian reward precipitated his military seizure."

Up until that moment the ostensible reason for forwarding these troops to Syria was to punish 'Abdallah Pasha of Acre for giving refuge to a number of Egyptian peasants who had fled to Syria in an attempt to evade conscription and taxes levied by the Pasha's government. 127 When Mehmed Ali complained to the Sublime Porte about 'Abdallah Pasha's refusal to hand back the peasants, the Porte replied by saying that as far as it was concerned both Egypt and Syria were imperial eyalets and the Sultan did not mind where his subjects wished to dwell as long as this was within his dominions. Obviously this was not the true or main reason for undertaking such a bold and dangerous expedition and the Porte knew very well that it was only a pretext. However, this continued to be the official line issued from Cairo.

XREF: Connects to the ongoing theme about Mehmed Ali's hidden aims in campaigns, like Hijaz and Sudan. Builds on: "Mehmed Ali's denied Syrian reward precipitated his military seizure."

Confronted with these defeats Sultan Mahmud II decided to raise yet another army in an attempt to "arrest the progress of an army whose success endangered the stability of his throne." He therefore summoned the Sadrazam Mehmed Raşid Pasha (an ally and protégé of Husrev) and entrusted him with raising a new army from different provinces of the Empire. Towards the end of October 1832 the Sadrazam was able to raise a formidable army composed of 80,000 men divided into four major sections. The first comprised about 20,000 men, mostly Albanians and nizami troops who were stationed in Scutari in Albania and was headed by the Sadrazam himself. The second section was composed of a similar number of men raised from areas around Erzurum and headed by Osman Pasha, vali of Trabzon. The third section numbered around 10,000 men under the command of Süleyman Pasha and was stationed to the north of Ibrahim Pasha’s army in the south of Anatolia. The fourth and last section was composed of 20,000 to 30,000 men who were the remnants of Hüseyin Pasha’s army and these were gathered around Konia under the command of Raouf Pasha. Aware of these preparations on the part of the Ottomans, Ibrahim was pressing his father to give him permission to proceed northward to deal with this troop concentration before they joined forces and formed a formidable front which would be more difficult to deal with. Finally in October he ordered his men to move northward towards the strategic city of Konia at the very center of the Anatolian plateau. Two months later, on 21 December 1832, the two armies met on the plain to the north of the city, and during the seven-hour battle Ibrahim’s army managed to inflict a heavy defeat on the Ottomans who were headed by the Sadrazam, Raşid Pasha.

Builds on: "Ottoman sultan resisted Egypt's Syrian expansion with armed threats."

This was the clearest victory Ibrahim had secured so far: the Ottomans lost ninety-two cannons, suffered 3,000 casualties and 10,000 were taken prisoner. Most significantly, the Egyptian army captured the Sadrazam himself who was led to Ibrahim Pasha as a prisoner. For their part, the Egyptians only suffered 262 casualties and 530 men were wounded.

Builds on: "Ibrahim's 1832 Syrian campaign captured Acre, Damascus, and Horns."

Halil Pasha, the head of the Ottoman navy, was thus dispatched to Alexandria with offers of peace to the Pasha of Egypt. This initiated a long and arduous process of negotiation which culminated in the peace of Kütahia agreed upon in May 1833. In this peace, brokered by the European powers (mainly Russia and France), the Sultan reluctantly conceded to his rebellious vali the eyalets of Egypt, Hijaz and Crete. Furthermore, Ibrahim Pasha was given the eyalets of Acre, Damascus, Tripoli and Aleppo, and after considerable hesitation, the post of muhassil (i.e. collector of taxes) of Adana as well. It is important to note, however, that the "peace of Kütahia" was not a permanent settlement, it was not a peace treaty but an agreement between Mahmud II and Mehmed Ali to end the state of war that had existed between them for over a year. Rather than finding his position more secure than before the campaign had started, the Pasha soon discovered that his osensibly improved status was dependent on an annual renewal by the Sultan, and was thus subject to his whims and to the intrigues of various courtiers in Istanbul. For after all, Mehmed Ali was not granted an independent status that would be recognized by the European powers and hence the agreement did not secure for him "the much desired legal independence as a sovereign" that he had been supposedly fighting for. As such, the agreement ending the Syrian war left none of the principal parties involved completely satisfied.

Builds on: "Ottoman sultan resisted Egypt's Syrian expansion with armed threats."

While it might be true to argue that the inconclusive and ambivalent nature of the "peace of Kütahia" had its reasons not in any European conspiracy designed to deny Mehmed Ali the fruits of his military conquests, or in British attempts to thwart his efforts at gaining independence, it was also the result of Mehmed Ali’s own cautious and often shifting stand during the difficult negotiations that led to that agreement. There can be various reasons for Mehmed Ali’s caution. One main reason was his receiving conflicting messages from the different European powers regarding their respective possible reactions to his moves against the Sultan. During the Morean war he once wrote to Nagib Efendi in Istanbul telling him "although I may be well versed in European mercantile affairs, I am ignorant when it comes to its political situation." Four years later his position was not much better and that remark was equally applicable to the new situation. In 1832 the French were passing on messages that they would stand by him in his struggle with the Sultan; the Russians, for their part, sent him an envoy, General Mouraviev, only one week before Halil’s arrival in Alexandria with a verbal threat that they would oppose him "with their forces by sea and by land if he persisted in advancing on Constantinople." And the stand of the one European power that mattered most, Great Britain, Mehmed Ali could not figure out, partly because of his own ambivalent position towards the British (a point that will be dealt with later) and partly because of British indecision and wavering attitude regarding the Pasha’s war with the Sultan.

XREF: Builds on the theme of Mehmed Ali's strategic ambivalence toward both the sultan and Europe; connects to earlier claims about his cautious and shifting stand, especially loc 104 and loc 182 about his ambivalence and contradictory goals. Builds on: "Ambivalence toward sultan reflected strategic rebellion, not identity crisis."

Mehmed Ali knew that the messages he was receiving from Barker were the Consul's own personal opinions and Palmerston, the British Foreign Secretary, who was later adamant in upholding the principle of preserving the integrity of the Ottoman Empire, was completely silent on the issue of his struggle with the Sultan. "There is not a single word either to Constantinople and Alexandria or to the British ambassadors at Paris, Vienna, and St. Petersburg; hardly any observation can be noticed during 1832 on despatches coming from these centers and touching on the subject of the Syrian war." The hostility that Palmerston felt towards Mehmed Ali developed later and, as will be shown in chapter 7 below, had other causes.

XREF: Pays off the earlier claim at loc 182 that Palmerston's silence masked his later firm policy; here the source specifies the hostility had separate origins. Pays off: "Ottoman sultan resisted Egypt's Syrian expansion with armed threats."

After sending his troops to Syria and after undertaking what could only be taken as a blatant act of rebellion against the authority of the Sultan, Mehmed Ali was still hoping to acquire Syria and to be pardoned by Mahmud at the same time. Documents abound showing how Mehmed Ali in 1832 still thought that he could get away with his act and that he could, in effect, both have his cake and eat it too.

DEFINE: Clarifies the historically documented simultaneous pursuit of contradictory goals by Mehmed Ali in 1832. Builds on: "Ottoman sultan resisted Egypt's Syrian expansion with armed threats."

Still, it was only in 1838 that Mehmed Ali decided to get rid of the Ottoman suzerainty altogether and to ask for independence. For the seven-year period from the inauguration of hostilities and up to that time the Pasha was only claiming to be after reforming the Ottoman Empire. This does not seem to have been a mere pretext on the part of the Pasha. He might not have believed in it entirely himself, but at the same time he could not think of himself as an outcast vali rebelling against the Ottoman Sultan; he needed to think of himself as doing something from within the Ottoman Empire and not against it.

XREF: Connects to the earlier claims about Mehmed Ali's ambivalence and self-conception as working within the Ottoman system rather than against it. Pays off: "Mehmed Ali expected both rebellion success and sultan's pardon."

The problem, however, was that the vali was too ambitious to be content with his position as a subservient vassal, and as time went on and as he grew stronger and stronger, he began to have aspirations of more independence from Istanbul. As is shown above, this inherent tension acquired momentum during the Greek debacle and surfaced in 1831 when he ordered his son to lead an expedition to invade Syria without the consent of the Sultan.

Pays off: "Mehmed Ali could not conceive of himself as rebelling against the sultan."

What finally tipped the balance towards rebellion was the Greek war which the Sultan had asked him to intervene in, thinking that it would weaken his strong vassal. Instead, the Pasha used it as an opportunity to try out his new troops and by the end of it he came out more resolved than ever before not to co-operate with the Sultan in the future. As far as can be discerned from his own letters it does not appear that he had contemplated military action against the Sultan before that time.

Builds on: "The Greek campaign permanently poisoned future Ottoman-Egyptian military cooperation."

These military victories, however, were not translated into new legal realities. The peace of Kütahia reached at after the cessation of hostilities did not grant Mehmed Ali the independence he was supposedly fighting for. As has been shown above, the inconclusive nature of this verbal agreement was not due to British or European hostilities to Mehmed Ali's schemes or to their interference in Istanbul to prevent him from pressing his demands. Rather, it was a reflection of the Pasha's own confused and ambivalent feelings regarding his position within the Ottoman Empire and his inability to come to terms with the legal implications of his rebellious moves, viz, to be declared a rebel by the Ottoman Sultan and to have Ottoman legitimacy withdrawn from him.

Builds on: "Ambivalence toward sultan reflected strategic rebellion, not identity crisis."

Above all, however, it was made possible by relying on naked force. It was the modern army that Mehmed Ali started to build in 1820–1 that enabled him to expand his sphere of influence to cover such wide areas of the Ottoman Empire. How Mehmed Ali was able to create that army and have it trained, paid and supplied in a manner that made these successive victories possible is the story of the following chapters.

Builds on: "Conscription and modern state institutions created Muhammad Ali's new army."

See, for example, the interesting account of staging an interview with some "Jerusalem notables" in the presence of some Ottoman visitors asking Mehmed Ali to interfere in Syria. As expected, the story was transmitted to Istanbul and relayed back to the Pasha via one of his agents there.

XREF: Builds on loc 59 (Pasha reception rituals staged power through deliberate shadow and spectacle) — both describe Mehmed Ali's theatrical manipulation as a governance tool, here extended to intelligence warfare. Builds on: "Pasha reception rituals staged power through deliberate shadow and spectacle."

Earlier, in March 1829, John Barker thought that the increased military activity in Cairo and Alexandria was in preparation for a military expedition to assist the Sultan in his war against Russia; FO 78/184, Barker, 10 March 1829. Dodwell, on the other hand, says that the Pasha had been asked to send troops to help subdue the rebellion of Mustafa Pasha Iskudarlɩ. When the request was dropped he "proposed to use the assembled forces to attack Abdullah Pasha of Acre"; Dodwell, Founder of Modern Egypt, p. 108.

XREF: Connects to the earlier claims about the Syrian campaign's causes being disputed (loc 248) and historians debating whether Mehmed Ali's wars sought independence or expansion (loc 199). QUESTION: The disagreement between Barker and Dodwell about whether the assembled forces targeted Russia, the Sultan's rebellion, or Acre highlights how primary sources and later historians reach different conclusions about motive. Builds on: "Official pretexts masked the true motives for the Syrian expedition."

See, for example, S/5/51/2/1 on 5 s 1247/9 January 1832, from Mehmed Ali to the Sublime Porte in which he says that he had undertaken this dramatic step only after he had repeatedly complained to the Porte of 'Abdallah Pasha's activities and was not answered; "on the contrary I was completely forgotten (nesyen mensiyen)".

Pays off: "Mehmed Ali could not conceive of himself as rebelling against the sultan."

For the festivities celebrating the arrival in Egypt of the firman granting these provinces to Mehmed Ali and his son, see Sāmī, ed., Taqwīm al-Nīl, II, p. 412, letter dated 19 Z 1248/9 May 1833 and ibid., p. 413, letter dated 10 M 1249/30 May 1833.

XREF: Connects to loc 59 on pasha reception rituals staging power through deliberate spectacle — both concern ceremonial display of authority.

Vereté argues, not very successfully, it should be added, that Palmerston as early as 1832 did have a clear idea about where British interests lay regarding the Turco-Egyptian crisis. He fails to explain, for example, why Palmerston refused the Porte's request for naval assistance. Be that as it may, the important issue is that even if he did have clear ideas about the Levant crisis, his Consul in Egypt did not know what these might have been, and Mehmed Ali was left in the dark regarding possible British moves.

XREF: Connects to earlier claims about Palmerston's silence during the campaign masking later firm policy (loc 182) and Palmerston's anti-Egyptian policy developing later from other causes (loc 254). Here the gap between London policy and local knowledge is the mechanism. Builds on: "Palmerston's anti-Egyptian policy developed only later from other causes."

While staying in the camp, the Pasha decided to invite various provincial governors from different parts of Egypt, ostensibly to report to him about the problems of conscripting soldiers as well as other administrative and financial matters. Having seen how impressive the new troops looked, the Pasha also wanted to impress his governors with his assembled troops so that "a true report of them might circulate through the country."

XREF: Connects to loc 59 (reception rituals staging power through spectacle) and loc 343 (staged interviews manipulating intelligence) — all showing the Pasha's theatrical management of perception. Builds on: "Pasha reception rituals staged power through deliberate shadow and spectacle."

There is nothing that represents this overpowering nature of the written word and its effect on things than the term qayd, which in Mehmed Ali's Egypt was the term used to mean conscription. Originally the term meant nothing more than "drafting" or writing a name in the conscription registers. The Arabic origin of the word, however, implies in addition to writing or inscribing the act of binding or tying (e.g. binding an animal to a tree). Moreover, it also implies subjugation, manipulation and control (inqiyād).

XREF: Connects to the theme that Egypt's control technologies—conscription, state lists—were reinvented under Muhammad Ali; the word's meaning itself encodes power.

In the event, forty-five officers were shot in front of their soldiers. Eventually the rebellion was brought down by Osman Bey, the colonel of the first regiment, which was on its way to the Sudan. … In one incident it was reported that one of the sergeants of Osman Bey's regiment, when attacking a certain village found his own father among the rebels, and failing to convince him to give in peacefully, proceeded to kill him.

XREF: Connects to the earlier claim that army discipline manufactured national identity and to the brutal efficiency of Muhammad Ali's regime. FICTION: A straggered officer killing his own rebel father is a potent dramatic scene for stories about loyalty dividing families.

Article 36 of Qānūn al-Filāḥa which was passed in early 1830 stipulated that any such shaykh, if found guilty, would receive 200 stripes of the whip (kurbāj). … Article 118 of al-Qānūn al-Muntakhab passed in February 1844 stipulated that the village shaykhs should search for the fugitives in their villages and instead of catching them themselves, as the earlier law had stipulated, they were now asked to report to the mudīr of the district. If four days had passed since the fugitive had left his village without being found, and if during that time the shaykh failed to report him, the shaykh would then be considered an accomplice of the fugitive, and in this case he would be hanged.

XREF: Relates to the reading on how state violence and coercive control operated through peripheral intermediaries like village shaykhs (loc 108), and to monopolized violence in state formation (loc 119). QUESTION: The escalating penalty from 200 lashes to hanging for the same offense suggests state policy hardening between 1830 and 1844 — worth tracing why the punishment escalated. Builds on: "Peripheral intermediaries enabled communication between Egypt's colonizers and colonized."

It was then that the Pasha thought for the first time of conscripting the natives of Egypt in order to relieve his Turkish soldiers from this task. … It is obvious that we are sending troops under the command of our children to the Sudan so as to fetch us blacks to use in the affair of the Hijaz [campaign] and other similar services . . . However, since the Turks are members of our race, and since they must remain close to us all the time and should be saved from being sent to these remote areas, it has become necessary to gather a number of soldiers from Upper Egypt.

XREF: Connects to earlier claims about Egyptian peasants resisting conscription and the ethnic divide between Ottoman officers and Egyptian soldiers, revealing why the Pasha diversified recruitment sources. Builds on: "Armies mirror their society's class structure internally."

Learning from Sultan Selim's unfortunate experience in dealing with his own old guard, Mehmed Ali knew only too well that any attempt to introduce modern tactics and training drills would have been met with staunch resistance on the part of the Mamluks who would rightly see in these new military techniques an attempt to abolish the old system which they had been monopolizing for centuries and to replace it by a new system in which their privileged positions would be seriously challenged. … On 1 March, 1811a festive ceremony was held in the Citadel to celebrate the appointment of his son, Tusun Pasha, to fight the Wahhabi rebels in Arabia. Mehmed Ali saw this as a golden opportunity to execute his deadly plan. He invited the heads of all the Mamluk households to attend the festive celebration and once they were on their way up a narrow alleyway leading to his court in the Citadel, he ordered his Albanian soldiers to open fire on them. Over four hundred and fifty of the Mamluk emirs were killed in that incident.

XREF: Connects to loc 223 where the sultan credited Mehmed Ali for inspiring nizami army reform — the massacre was the violent precondition for implementing those reforms in Egypt. Builds on: "The sultan credited his rival for inspiring nizami army reform."

In July 1823 he wrote to Ibrahim Pasha telling him to form a regiment out of the newly formed battalions and to dispatch it immediately to Arabia even if the soldiers had not yet finished their proper courses of training. … While the Pasha was still in Manfalūṭ news arrived of an impressive victory that his new troops had won against the Wahhabi rebels in 'Asir: a contingent of only 2,500 Egyptian infantry soldiers had succeeded in defeating a Wahabbi force ten times its size.

XREF: Connects to earlier claims about the new nizami army's effectiveness (loc 182: Egypt's new army proved its worth defeating Greek rebels in Morea). QUESTION: What made 2,500 untrained conscripts capable of defeating 25,000 Wahhabis? The equipment, discipline, or the enemy's condition? Pays off: "Ottoman sultan resisted Egypt's Syrian expansion with armed threats."

Initially the Pasha did not think of conscripting the fellahin of Egypt mainly because that would have meant moving productive labor from the agricultural sector which was the main source of revenue. Instead, he had his eye on the Sudan to supply him with docile, obedient soldiers for his new army, and in the summer of 1820 the Pasha dispatched two expeditions to the Sudan

Builds on: "Sudan's conquest served multiple state-building aims beyond gold."

Mehmed Ali's fascination with western models of reform, and French ones in particular, seems to be overstated. As obvious as it is that he was borrowing from the French, it is clear that he was equally influenced by the Ottomans who themselves had been borrowing from the French and adopting their models to suit their own needs. … Most important of these Ottoman attempts to create a disciplined army was Sultan Selim's new army, the nizam-i cedid.

XREF: Challenges the conventional European-centric framing seen throughout this book's treatment of reform, echoing the recurring critique of nationalist/historiographic distortion in loc 103 and loc 77. Builds on: "The sultan credited his rival for inspiring nizami army reform."

In the absence of any criteria as to whom to conscript the conscription gangs were eager to collect as many men as could be found without any regard to age or physical fitness. It was reported that out of 48,000 men collected throughout the 1820s and sent to the Hankah camp to the north of Cairo only 20,000 men were fit for military service.

QUESTION: Why did the conscription system lack any fitness criteria? What consequences did this waste have for the army's readiness and the peasant economy? Builds on: "Egyptians fiercely resisted forced military service under the Pasha."

First, having seen in the last chapter how Mehmed Ali succeeded in using his military force to capture his long-coveted province, Syria, this chapter and the following ones try to see how he managed to muster this military force in the first place. As said in the Introduction above, the story told here is not that of the great Pasha, his ambition or his designs; it is a story of an army and of the thousands of men from all over Egypt who served in it. The story therefore proceeds not chronologically following the Pasha waging one campaign after another, like most military history accounts do following great commanders in their glorious exploits. Rather, we follow a hypothetical soldier in the Pasha's army from the time he is conscripted, and we trace him to the training camp, then to the battle, and finally we watch him during the aftermath of the battle.

XREF: Builds on the earlier craft claim about narrative order subverting a subject's mystique (loc 66) and chronological narratives fabricating a purposeful arc (loc 188). This authorial method is the structural vehicle for those critiques. Pays off: "Chronological narratives fabricate a purposeful arc in Mehmed Ali's career."

Besides being an army that relied on conscription, the Pasha's army was novel in its reliance on the central government for its provisions and supplies. This was an army whose soldiers were issued uniforms designed, tailored and distributed from Cairo, and which had, among other things, an unprecedented medical establishment catering for it. It was an army that also depended on the central bureaucracy for its food, ammunition and supplies. Moreover, it was an army which triggered, through its reliance on conscription, considerable opposition from the population. In dealing with this opposition, the state resorted to various policing and surveillance practices and institutions that together changed the manner in which the state controlled society and altered the relationship that the population had with the government.

Builds on: "Conscription and modern state institutions created Muhammad Ali's new army."

Although Napoleon had left Egypt two years earlier in search of greater glory in France, and although this act had a significant effect on the morale of his troops who stayed behind in the hostile lands of Egypt, it would be wrong to assume that the Armée d'Orient had completely disintegrated after the departure of its charismatic leader. Furthermore, in spite of the short period during which it stayed in the country, the French Army did make a noticeable impact on Egypt. Though they did not try to enlist the Egyptians at large into their Armée d'Orient, the French nevertheless did form a regiment of some 2,000 Copts who were trained by French officers, clad in French uniforms and attached to the French army. A number of mamluk youths were also drafted in the French army and were said to make very good soldiers. Furthermore, some Maghribi soldiers were also organized according to the French system and drilled along French lines with the words of command issued in French.

XREF: Connects to earlier claims about armies relying on local manpower and multilevel integration (loc 111, 118), and to the broader theme of Egypt's modern army recruitment practices. Builds on: "Armies depend on multilingual bureaucrats, nurses, and sentries to function."

Immediately after the departure of the French army from Egypt Husrev Pasha, the new Ottoman Vali (whom we have already seen in the previous chapter and who would later become Mehmed Ali's life-long nemesis) set out to train some of the mamluk soldiers along French lines after enlisting in his service all those French officers who stayed behind when their army left Egypt. Husrev also formed a Sudanese regiment and trained it in the French style after tailoring for them "tight" French uniforms. These he formed into a private escort guard for himself, and he appointed an officer to "teach them the positions of the French."

However, Mehmed Ali’s fascination with western models of reform, and French ones in particular, seems to be overstated. As obvious as it is that he was borrowing from the French, it is clear that he was equally influenced by the Ottomans who themselves had been borrowing from the French and adopting their models to suit their own needs.

Builds on: "Egyptian governors' propaganda tours augmented the army's deterrence value."

It is not known for certain if Mehmed Ali did see for himself the performance of these new troops of the Sultan, although it is unlikely that they would have gone unnoticed by him given the fact that he was in Egypt at the same time. In any case, when he was devising an organizational structure for his army Mehmed Ali clearly preferred the one put down by Sultan Selim to that of Napoleon. In 1822 he commissioned Süleyman Ağa (Colonel Sèves), Osman Efendi Nureddin (whom he had earlier sent to France on an educational mission) and Ahmed Efendi Mühendis (who was translating military and naval books from French) to draw up a plan for the organization of the army; it was turned down because it was blindly copying the structure of Napoleon’s army. “Although the plan that Süleyman Ağa had put down is a wonderful one,” Mehmed Ali told his son, Ibrahim Pasha, “it has been implemented by Napoleon to lead an army composed of several thousand troops. Our army, however, is a new one which we have only recently begun creating.” Two weeks later he ordered his son to have a meeting with the same officials who had drafted the original plan and ordered them to draft a new organizational scheme for the army which he explicitly said should be along the lines of Sultan Selim’s army.

XREF: Builds directly on the earlier claim that 'Mehmed Ali's reforms drew on Ottoman models, not French ones alone' — this is a concrete instance revealing the same pattern, now shown as a deliberate choice rather than mere proximity. Builds on: "Egyptian governors' propaganda tours augmented the army's deterrence value."

Looking at the army he created at the end of his reign, however, one thing stands out as significantly different from other Ottoman military reform attempts, namely, adopting something close to universal conscription whereby masses of peasants were drafted in the new army. Yet again, in this respect the Pasha was being more pragmatic than radical. By following the steps he took in coming to this decision it becomes clear that he did not originally contemplate conscripting the fellahin of Egypt when he was thinking of founding his new army; rather he was pushed to taking this bold step only after he had run out of other alternatives.

Pays off: "Egyptian governors' propaganda tours augmented the army's deterrence value."

After years of attempting to pacify them the Pasha finally decided to get rid of their influence by expediently killing their leaders. On 1 March, 1811a festive ceremony was held in the Citadel to celebrate the appointment of his son, Tusun Pasha, to fight the Wahhabi rebels in Arabia. Mehmed Ali saw this as a golden opportunity to execute his deadly plan. He invited the heads of all the Mamluk households to attend the festive celebration and once they were on their way up a narrow alleyway leading to his court in the Citadel, he ordered his Albanian soldiers to open fire on them. Over four hundred and fifty of the Mamluk emirs were killed in that incident. This was followed by a ferocious pogrom against any Mamluk leaders who had succeeded in escaping the massacre in the Citadel. The Pasha’s Albanian troops were allowed to enter the Mamluks’ houses in Cairo plundering their property and raping their women. In the event around 1,000 Mamluk emirs and soldiers died in the city of Cairo alone during the few days that followed the massacre in the Citadel. This was followed a year later by a military expedition led by Ibrahim Pasha to Upper Egypt to pursue those Mamluks who had succeeded in evading the massacre in Cairo, and another 1,000 were said to have been killed.

XREF: Pays off the earlier claim at loc 410 that Mehmed Ali massacred the Mamluks to clear military reform's path — this provides the specific details (date, Citadel venue, casualty counts) that ground that earlier assertion. Builds on: "Egyptian governors' propaganda tours augmented the army's deterrence value."

However, it is important to remember that even in this incident Mehmed Ali was not as pioneering as first appears, and that there had been earlier and very similar attempts by the Ottomans to get rid of the Mamluks. The last such attempt took place after Mehmed Ali had arrived in Egypt. On 22 October 1801 Hüseyin Pasha, the Grand Admiral of the Ottoman navy (who had arrived with the new nizami troops to assist the British in evicting the French from the country) invited the leading Mamluk emirs to a banquet on board his flagship and confronted them with an imperial invitation to go with him to Istanbul. Seeing the “invitation” for what it was, the emirs attempted to escape the ship and in the ensuing struggle a large number of them were killed and others were arrested only to be rescued later by the British and allowed to flee to upper Egypt.

XREF: Connects to and complicates the earlier reading of Mehmed Ali's 1811 Mamluk massacre, showing he followed an established Ottoman pattern rather than innovating. Builds on: "Mehmed Ali massacred over a thousand Mamluks to end their influence."

These proved more difficult to deal with than the Mamluks mainly because the Pasha was an Albanian himself and it would not have been that expedient to kill his own soldiers. This was so not because this would have been judged unethical or immoral but because the Albanians continued to be the backbone of his strength for some time. Counting nearly as mercenaries within the larger Ottoman contingent that brought them to Egypt, however, they were not a very orderly body of troops and they often revolted in small uprisings in the streets of Cairo asking for their pay or to be returned home. They also retained their tribal structure and recognized Mehmed Ali only as a “first among equals,” resisting any attempt by him to impose discipline on them.

XREF: Connects to the theme of mercenary/tribal soldiers versus disciplined state armies — echoes the earlier claims about armies mirroring their society's class structure and military discipline manufacturing identity. Builds on: "Armies mirror their society's class structure internally."

When the Sultan ordered Mehmed Ali to fight the Wahhabis in Arabia he was reluctant to agree to comply with the imperial order considering the amount of time and money that would have gone into fulfilling it. However, he realized that this would be a golden opportunity to get rid of many troublesome groups, foremost among whom were the Albanians. During the seven-year conflict against the Wahhabis he sent wave after wave of them to face their destiny in the barren deserts of Arabia, thus effectively ridding himself of their nuisance.

XREF: Connects to loc 433's claim that Albanian soldiers retained tribal structure resisting Pasha discipline, and to loc 192's claim that the Hijaz campaign served multiple hidden aims. Builds on: "The Hijaz campaign served multiple hidden aims beyond suppressing Wahhabis."

Although there might be some truth in these allegations37 the main reason for invading the Sudan as far as could be detected from the Pasha's own letters to his commanders was undoubtedly to capture as many of the inhabitants there as possible and send them to Egypt to form the soldiery of the new army that the Pasha intended to create. When Ismail Pasha wrote to Mehmed Ali informing him of the amount of taxes levied in the conquered areas, his father wrote back telling him to pay more attention to collecting men not money "since the reason for incurring all these expenses and undertaking all these troubles is not to collect money, as I have repeatedly written to you, but to raise men who would be suitable for our affairs."

Builds on: "Egyptian governors' propaganda tours augmented the army's deterrence value."

Moreover, Ismail Pasha proved to be utterly incompetent in managing the army. He was inexperienced, indecisive, stubborn and un-charismatic. His father was constantly urging him to seek the advice of older men in his company. Ismail, however, did not listen to his father's advice and eventually lost the confidence of his own men. An alarming number of his artillerymen deserted him at a time when he most needed them. Furthermore, the whole province of Sinnār broke out in revolt as a result of the new taxes he was levying and the manner by which he was collecting them. His brutality, rashness, and impetuous nature ultimately cost him his own life in a tragic incident: he was burnt alive during a banquet that Nemr, the King of Shindī, ostensibly held in his honor. This was in revenge for Ismail having previously humiliated him by slapping him on the face.

Builds on: "Muhammad Ali invaded Sudan chiefly to capture conscripts, not wealth."

It soon became obvious to the Pasha that something was going drastically wrong with his plans to raise an army of these Sudanese men. When, for example, he knew that out of 2,400 slaves arriving in Aswan only 1,245 managed to reach Cairo, he said "My wonder! We spend so much energy to fetch these slaves, healthy and capable of work, from remote areas only to perish in our midst and in front of our eyes!" To add to his problems, the Turkish and Albanian soldiers that were sent to the Sudan were not accustomed to the weather there and soon fell victim to dysentery and other fevers. The troops also started to grumble and to demand to be sent back to Egypt. It was then that the Pasha thought for the first time of conscripting the natives of Egypt in order to relieve his Turkish soldiers from this task.

XREF: Connects to the earlier claim about the conscription of Upper Egyptians to spare Turkish soldiers, and to the Sudan conquest's aim of capturing conscripts. This highlight shows the plan's failure actually forced the Pasha to conscript Egyptians. Pays off: "Muhammad Ali invaded Sudan chiefly to capture conscripts, not wealth."

This is the earliest decree by the Pasha ordering the conscription of the fellah population of Egypt to the army, and it is clear from it that nothing of the nature of the levée en masse was contemplated. Rather, the idea was to replace those Turkish soldiers who for one reason or another objected to being sent to the Sudan. The new conscripts were to be drafted only for three years at the end of which time they were to be given a stamped certificate and allowed to go back to their villages.

XREF: Directly qualifies the earlier claim that conscription underpinned the Pasha's regime — this shows the initial conscription was far more modest than the levée en masse often imagined. Pays off: "Universal conscription was Mehmed Ali's last resort, not initial plan."

While both the officers and soldiers were being trained consultation was going on among top officials to devise an organizational structure for the new army. People involved in these consultations were Ibrahim Pasha, Süleyman Ağa (Sèves), Ahmed Pasha Tahir (Governor of Jirja), Mehmed Bey Lazoğlu (head of the military school established in Aswan, and later to be appointed as Director of the War Department) and, of course, Mehmed Ali himself. At issue were the following points: the size and internal division of the regiments, the ratio of officers to soldiers, and the ethnic composition of the officer corps, in addition to the pay of the different ranks.

Builds on: "Conscription and modern state institutions created Muhammad Ali's new army."

As the option of training his Albanian soldiers had failed, the alternative was to depend totally on the Egyptian fellahin and go beyond the 4,000 troops that he had conscripted early in 1822. As was shown above, these peasants were to be conscripted only for three years after which time they would be returned to their villages. Moreover, the main purpose of conscripting them was to relieve the Turkish soldiers in the Sudan from the main task of gathering Sudanese slaves. Any attempt at gathering more Egyptian fellahin carried with it the danger of moving significant numbers of laborers out of the agricultural sector. Moreover, the Egyptian fellahin had not been used to military service and during Ottoman rule were, de jure, forbidden to bear arms.

XREF: Builds on earlier claims about Muhammad Ali sparing Egypt's agricultural labor by seeking Sudanese manpower (loc 410, 438), and about the limits of early conscription (loc 446, 429). Builds on: "Egyptian governors' propaganda tours augmented the army's deterrence value."

Having made up his mind to rely on the peasants of Egypt, conscription waves spread throughout the country and less than a year later 30,000 troops were already being trained in a new camp that was established in Banī 'Adī near Manfalūṭ in Middle Egypt.

XREF: Builds on earlier claims about peasant resistance (loc 92) and conscription threatening agricultural labor (loc 454). Pays off: "Egyptians fiercely resisted forced military service under the Pasha."

In the meantime, however, ten battalions of 800 men each were formed in the camps in Aswan and Farshūṭ. These were made up of the Sudanese slaves in addition to the Egyptian fellahin who were initially conscripted from villages in Upper Egypt. On hearing that a new Wahhabi revolt had occurred in 'Asīr in the south of Hijaz, Mehmed Ali decided that it was time to try out his new troops. In July 1823 he wrote to Ibrahim Pasha telling him to form a regiment out of the newly formed battalions and to dispatch it immediately to Arabia even if the soldiers had not yet finished their proper courses of training.

Builds on: "Conscription waves rapidly recruited 30,000 Egyptian peasants within a year."

A short while later the new nizami troops had another chance to prove themselves to the Pasha. On 22 March 1824 a big explosion took place in a powder magazine inside the Citadel in which more than 4,000 people were killed. There were rumors that the explosion was caused by some of the old troops of Albanians and mamluks who were not pleased at the Pasha's introduction of the nizami troops.

XREF: Connects to earlier claim about Albanian soldiers retaining tribal structure and resisting the Pasha's discipline (loc 433). Builds on: "Albanian soldiers retained tribal structure resisting the Pasha's discipline."

While the Pasha was still in Manfalūṭ news arrived of an impressive victory that his new troops had won against the Wahhabi rebels in ‘Asir: a contingent of only 2,500 Egyptian infantry soldiers had succeeded in defeating a Wahabbi force ten times its size. It had become obvious that no matter how semi-trained these troops might have been, even the ferocious Wahhabis were no match for them.

Builds on: "Egyptian governors' propaganda tours augmented the army's deterrence value."

A big revolt erupted in Upper Egypt against the Pasha's conscription and tax policies. Over 30,000 men and women joined this rebellion which was headed by a certain Shaykh Raḍwān who claimed himself to be the mahdi and declared Mehmed Ali to be an infidel.

Builds on: "Resistance to modernizing troops could take covert violent forms."

This was the clearest proof yet of the loyalty of the new troops and the Pasha was greatly impressed by them knowing that they did not hesitate to fight the rebels who were sometimes their own neighbors or relatives. In one incident it was reported that one of the sergeants of Osman Bey's regiment, when attacking a certain village found his own father among the rebels, and failing to convince him to give in peacefully, proceeded to kill him. On being informed of this incident Mehmed Ali wrote to the Director of the War Department, Mehmed Bey Lazoğlu, praising the soldier and promoting him to the rank of lieutenant.

SEED: The fratricidal loyalty demanded by the new army offers a striking angle: how state-making militarizes personal kinship, turning neighbor against relative to cement allegiance to the ruler over family.

Gone were the days when an Ottoman vali or a Mamluk emir could issue an order or declare a wish and be practically ignored, cannily evaded, or met by cold indifference and a calculated lack of interest on the part of the population. Conscription was to transform the face of Egyptian society and to drastically alter the relationship between the government and the populace.

Builds on: "Conscripting peasant farmers threatened Egypt's agricultural labor supply."

As was said above, the first attempt at conscripting the Egyptian fellahin stemmed from the desire to relieve the Turkish soldiers in Mehmed Ali's pay from serving in the remote and hot lands of the Sudan. The 4,000 peasants who were gathered from villages in Upper Egypt to replace them were to be conscripted for only three years at the end of which they would each be given a stamped certificate and allowed to return to their villages and resume their normal, civilian lives. The conscripts would also be exempted from the head tax (firda) and other financial liabilities that the fellah population was subjected to.

XREF: Builds on loc 446, which established conscription was limited-term, not mass mobilization; this highlight substantiates that claim with the actual policy details. Builds on: "Early conscription was limited term, not total mass mobilization."

In addition to lacking any detailed information about the population, the authorities also did not as yet have a reliable medical system to screen the conscripted. This is something that had to wait till 1830 after Clot Bey had managed to create the Abū Za'bal medical school (later to be moved to Qaṣr al-'Ainī) and to use its graduates to examine the conscripts.

Builds on: "Egyptian governors' propaganda tours augmented the army's deterrence value."

Lacking this vital information, the conscripting officers, on receiving their orders, would descend upon any given village and seize as many men as could be found "without any order, arrangement, inscription, or lot-drawing." These men would then be tied together with ropes around their necks in groups of six or eight. They would then be marched off to the training camps escorted by the "conscription gang." leaving behind a "heart-stricken, sorrowful group" of wives, mothers and children wailing and screaming and hopelessly trying to prevent the soldiers from taking away their men.

XREF: Connects to the earlier claim at loc 410 that conscription gangs ignored age and fitness, wasting most recruits — this highlight supplies the vivid mechanics of those arbitrary seizures. Builds on: "Egyptian governors' propaganda tours augmented the army's deterrence value."

It is here that we come to the nub of the problem facing Mehmed Ali and his military authorities: the Pasha never succeeded in inducing the fellahin to join the colors out of their free will by employing ideological or religious arguments. Soon after the new conscription policy had become known in the countryside the fellahin employed different methods to escape the Pasha's men who were sent to press them into service. One such method was open rebellion and at least two such rebellions are known to have occurred and to have been directly connected to the Pasha's conscription policy. Mention has already been made of the big revolt in Upper Egypt in 1824 in which 30,000 people rebelled against Mehmed Ali's authorities, attacked the officials sent from Cairo, and refused to pay taxes. Earlier, in May 1823, immediately after conscription had been introduced in Lower Egypt, a smaller yet significant uprising erupted in the province of Minūfiyya and to quell it Mehmed Ali had to go there in person armed with his palace guards and six field cannons.

Builds on: "Egyptians fiercely resisted forced military service under the Pasha."

Besides open revolt another tactic the fellahin often used was to desert their villages altogether to avoid being taken into the army. As soon as news of the approach of the recruiting party reached a village, "– and it spread over the country like wildfire –" a wave of desertion followed with masses of families fleeing their homes and villages desperately trying to evade the conscription gangs. By the late 1830s this practice was so widespread that entire villages were found completely abandoned leaving behind sad, deplorable villages "buried in their stillness . . . where the dwellings of the poor inhabitants . . . still standing, neither blackened by fire, nor destroyed by war, nor decayed by time, but deprived of their inhabitants [who attempted to avoid the agents of the Pasha] by giving up house and home, and deserting, en masse, the devoted town or village."

Builds on: "Peasants rebelled openly rather than submit to forced conscription."

In the absence of any criteria as to whom to conscript the conscription gangs were eager to collect as many men as could be found without any regard to age or physical fitness. It was reported that out of 48,000 men collected throughout the 1820s and sent to the Hankah camp to the north of Cairo only 20,000 men were fit for military service. “Lame, blind, decrepid, all were sent without distinction.”

SEED: The staggering 42% mortality/attrition rate in conscription could anchor an article on state violence and demographic waste in early modernization.

It was realized as early as 1822 that it was the shaykhs who exclusively had the detailed information needed to implement the conscription policy at the village level. Initially, as was described above, the conscription gang would arrive in the village and would round up as many men as could be found. However, given the speed by which news of its imminent arrival would spread to the villages, a wave of desertion ensued making it impossible for the Turkish-speaking officers to ascertain if the men currently present in the village were the only men available or if others had already fled the village. It soon became evident that without the collaboration of the shaykhs the authorities could not be sure that the men actually present were all the men that could potentially be gathered from any given village. Village shaykhs were therefore asked to assist the conscription officers in their task. However, many shaykhs refused to collaborate with the authorities against their fellow villagers and often resisted the pressure from above to comply with the system by employing various ways that ranged from a calculated lack of interest in government policies to deliberate attempts to frustrate such policies.

XREF: Builds on loc 410's claim that failed shaykhs were whipped and hanged, showing the coercive relationship between state and intermediaries from the other side. Builds on: "Egyptian governors' propaganda tours augmented the army's deterrence value."

New techniques of surveillance were introduced to enable the government to have a tighter control over the population both in the cities and in the countryside. For example, in an attempt to curb the phenomenon of fellahin fleeing their villages and escaping to neighboring ones where they might be caught by the shaykhs of these new villages, the authorities decreed that every villager should carry a stamped certificate or passport (tezkere) which should state his name, his father’s name, his physical description, and his village. If found without this certificate he would immediately be sent back to his village. Even village shaykhs were ordered to carry such tezkeres when visiting Cairo. More radically, the authorities resorted to tattooing some soldiers’ bodies in order to facilitate catching them in case they deserted. When it was discovered that sailors were escaping from their ships every Friday, the day on which they were given leave to go ashore, it was decreed that all marine soldiers should have their arms and legs stamped with the signs of a ship and an anchor.

XREF: Connects to earlier highlights about peasants resisting conscription (loc 471, 472) and whole villages emptying to evade the Pasha's gangs — this shows the state's administrative countermeasures. Pays off: "Whole villages emptied to evade the Pasha's conscription gangs."

However efficient these new tactics might have been, the authorities continued to suffer from the critical lack of any reliable information about the population: its size, its age composition, location, professions, etc. From the early years of the “conscription waves” the authorities in Cairo knew that no consistent conscription policy could properly be implemented without such information, however vague it might be. … Believing that “the welfare of the people depends on a good census” the Pasha as early as 1827 ordered the drafting of a general census for the Northern Provinces. Eventually, this process of gathering detailed information about the population and categorizing it under different headings culminated in 1845 in the drafting of the first national census based on the number of households.

XREF: Builds on earlier claims about surveillance techniques (loc 481) and the modern state's administrative reach (loc 119), extending the theme of state knowledge-gathering as a governance tool. Builds on: "Surveillance techniques curbed peasants fleeing conscription in Egyptian villages."

These new tools that the bureaucracy introduced were tools of standardization and compartmentatization, of manipulation and control, tools that ushered in what could be termed a process of “inscribing reality.” This process assumed that the starting point of managing people and things would be the place they occupied not in their natural environment, but on paper, e.g. in the inventory list, the roll call, or the census. … Unlike a soldier whose body had been tattooed by the authorities and whose desertion was discovered after he was found, a soldier whose name appeared in a village conscription register would have his desertion detected even before he was found. Any missing item could only be truly missing if it did not show up in the list; otherwise it was still considered present albeit only in name (ismi var cismi yok.: lit. having a name but no body).

DEFINE: The passage defines 'inscribing reality' as the bureaucratic practice of situating people and things on paper rather than in their natural environment. XREF: Ties to loc 483 on census-taking formalizing state knowledge, and to loc 410 on how writing (qayd) was yoked to coercion. Builds on: "Census-taking formalized state knowledge of its population."

This chapter has attempted to uncover the factors that prompted Mehmed Ali to conscript the male population of Egypt and has shown that the Pasha did not originally intend to press them into military service but was forced to do so only after his Albanians troops resisted his efforts at imposing discipline and after he failed to raise troops from the Sudan in any efficient way.

Builds on: "Universal conscription was Mehmed Ali's last resort, not initial plan."

On a deeper level, then, this chapter has argued that the significance of conscription in Mehmed Ali’s army exceeds the sheer weight of the number of those gathered or its impact on the demographic composition of the countryside. Conscription, the population’s aversion and reaction to it, and the government’s attempts to counteract this resistance formed the impetus for the implementation in Egypt of a radically different system of controlling and governing the country. Resorting to physical force as represented by the conscription gang was no longer thought effective in tapping the country’s human resources. Gradually a shift to more subtle, hidden techniques of power took place, represented by the tezkere, the register, and ultimately the census.

Builds on: "Conscription fundamentally transformed Egypt's government-population relationship."

It is fairly certain that Mehmed Ali did not learn to read and write until he was aged about fifty; accordingly his letters were dictated to scribes and written down on the spot (a fact that explains the very spontaneous and immediate nature of many of them), and the books with which he was familiar and to which he often referred had been read to him.

QUESTION: How much did scribal mediation distort the documentary record biographers rely on to reconstruct Mehmed Ali's intentions?

Although all mamluks were technically slaves, there were sharp differences among them. The leaders of the households are referred to as "Mamluks," and it was these who were the target of the massacre of 1811. Their followers who later joined Mehmed Ali's service as well as other white slaves who were bought by him and by other dignitaries are referred to as "mamluks."

DEFINE: Clarifies the technical distinction between capitalized 'Mamluks' (household leaders) and lowercase 'mamluks' (ordinary white slaves) in Ottoman Egyptian society. Builds on: "The Ottomans' own purges of the Mamluks preceded Mehmed Ali's massacre."

Interestingly, this seems to have been the case when any government resorted to universal conscription. For this practice in the Napoleonic armies, see Forrest, Conscripts and Deserters, p. 136; for a similar reaction by Russian serfs in the nineteenth century and, significantly, self-inflicted wounds (SIW) among British troops during the First World War, see John Keegan, The Face of Battle (London: Penguin, 1976), p. 275n.

XREF: Extends the recurring theme of conscription resistance across Egypt (loc 92, 459, 471, 472) into a comparative global pattern — Napoleonic France, Russian serfs, and British WWI troops. Pays off: "Egyptians fiercely resisted forced military service under the Pasha."

In 1824 Mehmed Bey, the colonel of one of the first six regiments of Mehmed Ali's new army, wrote to the Pasha telling him he had a problem with those who committed sodomy: should he treat them as adulterers (and thus apply the punishment for adultery on them) or should he apply a different law? Mehmed Ali responded by saying that the colonel had to consult the military regulations and apply what they said. The problem was that by that time the military regulations and laws that had been translated and published in the Būlāq Press made no mention of sodomy or how to deal with it.

QUESTION: The ambiguity of whether sodomy should trigger adultery punishment reveals how imported legal codes left gaps for unanticipated offenses.

In contrast to Qānūn al-Filāḥa the various military codes passed to regulate different aspects of life in the army attempted to draw a closer link between crime and punishment. To ensure blind obedience to its regulations, Mehmed Ali's army could not rely on the blurred definition of crime or the haphazard application of punishment that characterized a number of laws passed to regulate aspects of civilian life.

Builds on: "Egyptian military law lacked provisions governing sodomy in 1824."

Art. 15 of Qānūn al-Filāḥa passed in 1830 stipulated that In the event of a fellah hiding himself among the bedouins, wearing their clothes, and being discovered among them afterward . . . the tribesman who hides him will be conscripted into the military service if he is a young man (shabb), and if an old man (ikhtiyār), he will be sent to jail (Liman) for six months.

XREF: Connects to the earlier claims about conscription resistance (loc 471, 472, 593) — here the state legislates against third parties who hide fugitive conscripts, expanding the net of liability. Builds on: "Conscripts universally resisted through desertion and self-inflicted wounds."

It is clear that a change has taken place in the meaning and intention of punishment where it was no longer seen as a means of exacting vengeance from the offender, or a way by which the sovereign attempted to restore his momentarily injured sovereignty; rather, it became a way of making sure that no crime went unpunished. This new conception of punishment, represented in the specific example of imprisonment and internment in general, reflected a change in the meaning of discipline and the ways to bring it about.

XREF: Connects to loc 628 claims about Egyptian military law and how codes tied crime to punishment — this highlight provides the general theoretical framing for those specific legal findings. Builds on: "Egyptian military law lacked provisions governing sodomy in 1824."

Ahmed Bey, the Colonel of the 10th Regiment, who was appointed in charge of the fortress of Acre after its fall, wrote to Ibrahim Pasha complaining of the situation, and instead of requesting the dispatch of bedouin troops to catch the deserters, he suggested a simple, but effective solution: a roll-call (tadad), he said, should be taken twice a day; those found missing would be recorded as firar, i.e. as deserters, and when found a day or more later the penalty for desertion would be inflicted on them.

SEED: The passage highlights how bureaucratic accounting (daily roll-call) converted ambiguous absence into punishable desertion — a simple procedural fix replacing costly dispersed patrols. Could frame an essay on how paperwork systems solve military control problems. Builds on: "Surveillance techniques curbed peasants fleeing conscription in Egyptian villages."

An estimated 22,000 women and children, for example, are supposed to have lived on the outskirts of the Hankah camp near Abū Za'bal. Ultimately, however, and mainly for health reasons, this practice was stopped, the shanty-towns appended to the camps were dismantled, and strict regulations were enforced preventing the soldiers from having access to their families.

XREF: Builds on the authoritarian-control theme from loc 486 (bureaucratic inscription) and the camp-isolation claim at loc 123. Builds on: "Military camps isolated recruits and imposed separate legal codes."

Immediately after the fall of Acre in May 1832 the Egyptian soldiers we saw at the beginning of this chapter as an organized, well-trained and highly disciplined body of troops who enabled Ibrahim to accomplish what Napoleon failed to do thirty years earlier, these very same soldiers went on the rampage looting the city, attacking its inhabitants, and destroying their property. All semblance of order and discipline disappeared in the havoc that followed and a large number of soldiers seized the opportunity to desert the army altogether.

XREF: Connects to the theme of army discipline and coercive control already claimed in loc 410 (mutinous officers shot) and loc 593 (conscripts resisted through desertion). Pays off: "Resistance to modernizing troops could take covert violent forms."

This dramatic confrontation of two kinds of warfare, one disciplined and orderly, and the other characterized by reliance on the bodily strength and personal courage of the warriors was repeated thirty-three years later in the battle of Acre in 1832. This time it was the turn of the Egyptians led by Ibrahim Pasha to reveal signs of the new type of warfare: hierarchical subordination, Frederickian discipline, and machine-like order. His adversary 'Abdallah Pasha, Vali of Sidon, had closed himself up in the formidable fortress of Acre that Napoleon himself could not take some thirty years earlier. For six months Ibrahim besieged the city and it was constantly showered with shells. The Egyptian artillerymen fired literally thousands of shells and it was said that not a single house had escaped uninjured. Finally the city could stand the siege no longer and when on the night of 26/27 May 1832 the Egyptian engineers and artillerymen effectively improved their precision and succeeded in making four breaches in the wall

Builds on: "Ibrahim's 1832 Syrian campaign captured Acre, Damascus, and Horns."

This dramatic confrontation of two kinds of warfare, one disciplined and orderly, and the other characterized by reliance on the bodily strength and personal courage of the warriors was repeated thirty-three years later in the battle of Acre in 1832. This time it was the turn of the Egyptians led by Ibrahim Pasha to reveal signs of the new type of warfare: hierarchical subordination, Frederickian discipline, and machine-like order. His adversary 'Abdallah Pasha, Vali of Sidon, had closed himself up in the formidable fortress of Acre that Napoleon himself could not take some thirty years earlier. For six months Ibrahim besieged the city and it was constantly showered with shells. The Egyptian artillerymen fired literally thousands of shells and it was said that not a single house had escaped uninjured. Finally the city could stand the siege no longer and when on the night of 26/27 May 1832 the Egyptian engineers and artillerymen effectively improved their precision and succeeded in making four breaches in the wall, Ibrahim Pasha summoned his senior officers to discuss with them the plan of attack that would take place the following day.

XREF: Continues the earlier claim about Ibrahim's 1832 Syrian campaign capturing Acre; here adding the tactical detail that precision artillery, not numbers, cracked the fortress. Builds on: "Ibrahim's 1832 Syrian campaign captured Acre, Damascus, and Horns."

On the morning of 27 May the attack took place as planned. All the details were executed as previously laid down. Ibrahim Pasha was even capable in the midst of the three-hour battle to send 100 cavalrymen to move the wounded to the camp to be treated by the army doctors and surgeons who were waiting there. Finally at sunset four notables came out of the castle asking for safe-conduct (amān) and when they were granted it 'Abdallah Pasha gave himself up to Ibrahim Pasha.

XREF: Connects to loc 628's point about bureaucratic rules driving disciplinary practice, and to the broader theme of Mehmed Ali's army combining brutality with orderly governance. Builds on: "Egyptian military law lacked provisions governing sodomy in 1824."

Ibrahim had to boost the morale of his men to prepare them for the coming battle. For this purpose he wrote a lengthy letter to the soldiers which was printed in the camp press and circulated among senior officers to read aloud in front of the soldiers. … Because of what we know of your courage and valor in the previous wars that you have witnessed in the Hijaz [he told them,] we have selected you from among other soldiers for the duty [of attacking the fortress] of Acre, which is now ready and exhausted. We remind and alert you that once you receive orders of attack hold your rifles tight in your hands and storm your targets like fire . . . Do not fear the enemy, because if they come with swords, then your bayonets will be longer; and if they come with muskets, then the continuous volleys that you have been trained to perform over the past eleven years will make every one of you count as ten of the enemy soldiers. You have to remember our order: first, storm quickly and forcibly and then strengthen your footholds; and, second, listen very carefully to the orders of your commanders and execute them without using your minds in understanding what they mean [wa lā ta'malū shai'an min 'aqlikum]. … The performance of the Mamluks at the battle of Imbāba and that of the Egyptian army at the battle of Acre more than thirty years later could hardly be more sharply contrasted. The Mamluk attitude to war and fighting shown in the 1798 battle against the French was an example of a method of warfare made obsolete by the new evolving drills and technology. al-Jabartī's and Boyer's accounts of the battle show clearly how they relied on their personal bodily strength; how important cavalry was for their army so that nearly no infantry is mentioned in the accounts of the battle; how decisions to charge or retreat were left to the personal initiative of the warriors; how their dress in its embroidered caftans and colorful turbans was an expression of their social status not of their military ranks; and finally how out-of-date their weapons were, comprising as they did swords, pikes, maces and muskets. … Ibrahim's army was a complete contrast to all of this. Instead of relying on cavalry, there was a nearly total reliance on infantry. The successful execution of the battle drew mainly on training drills that the soldiers had been exercising literally for years prior to the battle. Personal strength, courage and valor, were supplanted by strict discipline, blind obedience to superiors and literal implementation of orders. Instead of individual initiative, hierarchical subordination became the norm. Instinctive reactions had been replaced by strict implementation of a plan that had been previously laid down and meticulously rehearsed. In short, the army started to fight as a unit with the soldiers all acting in unison, following commands, orders and signals.

In the thirty or so years that separate the battles of Imbāba and Acre something dramatic had taken place. The haphazard, instinctive “art” of warfare had given place to the planned, hierarchical “science” of war. The warrior had become an extinct species and was replaced by the disciplined, trained soldier. In less than thirty years, in fact in a little more than ten years, a “modern” army was built in Egypt, an army that was essentially different from that of the Mamluks, different not only in its size or in the method of recruiting its soldiers, but also in the manner in which its soldiers were trained and disciplined.

The way the fellah dealt with his time, his physical environment, and above all, his own body was to be radically transformed. As will be shown below, the new military life would impose timetables, medical checks and strict surveillance systems the net effect of which was intended to impress upon the new soldier the formidable barrier that would distinguish his new life in the army from his previous civilian life.

XREF: Connects to loc 123 on camps isolating recruits with separate legal codes, and loc 464 on conscription transforming government-population relations. Builds on: "Military camps isolated recruits and imposed separate legal codes."

So long as the soldiers were in Egypt their wives and children were allowed to follow them from camp to camp and to build shanty-towns close to the training camp, living as best as they could by sharing the meager rations of the soldiers.

Builds on: "Egyptian military law lacked provisions governing sodomy in 1824."

An estimated 22,000 women and children, for example, are supposed to have lived on the outskirts of the Hankah camp near Abū Za‘bal. Ultimately, however, and mainly for health reasons, this practice was stopped, the shanty-towns appended to the camps were dismantled, and strict regulations were enforced preventing the soldiers from having access to their families.

XREF: Complements an earlier highlight claiming bureaucratic rules, not health, drove dismantling camps' family shantytowns — here the text gives health as the stated reason, showing the two rationales coexisting. Builds on: "Egyptian military law lacked provisions governing sodomy in 1824."

The new “army was no longer to be thought of as an occasional body, brought together for seasonal campaigns. It was to be an organized force, created out of men compelled to live permanently together as a distinct community, continuously under training even when not at war.” In other words, isolating the recruits in barracks, training camps and military schools was the first essential step towards the creation of the professional, disciplined soldier.

Builds on: "Military routine deliberately ruptured soldiers from their civilian lives."

In Cyprus, for example, various reports were sent to Mehmed Ali in Egypt informing him of the unruly conduct of his troops. In one case Ismail Bey, the commander of the Egyptian forces there, wrote that a number of soldiers had stolen 20 kises (purses) and then, out of fear of getting arrested, had taken refuge in the French consulate. Another group of soldiers attacked the residence of the French consul (who was visiting Sidon at the time) and cut down the trees in his garden.

XREF: Connects to earlier claims about disciplinary breakdown and soldiers looting Acre (loc 628): this shows Egyptian troops' unruly conduct extended to attacks on foreign consular property in Cyprus. Builds on: "Egyptian military law lacked provisions governing sodomy in 1824."

For example, some of the problems the authorities had with the early army that was sent to Arabia arose out of the soldiers’ mingling with the local population and the ensuing complaints that they were attacking the pilgrims and stealing their animals. After the creation of the new army this disruptive mingling with the local population continued to be a problem especially when the army was outside Egypt, notably in Crete, Cyprus and Syria, and the records abound with complaints by civilians against the unruly, impetuous behavior of the soldiers.

But as happened in the case of the village shaykhs reviewed in the previous chapter, relying on the bedouins was not without its problems. The ‘Abbādī and Hawwāra tribesmen, for example, who guarded Ismail Pasha’s troops that accompanied him in his ill-fated Sudan campaign, occasionally deserted and fled back to their provinces. Moreover, the different tribes were in constant rivalry with one another and when they thought that they were not treated equally by the authorities, they rebelled and attacked the countryside, the very thing the government had sought to prevent by employing them.

XREF: Connects to the earlier claim about village shaykhs' unreliability (loc 410) — both deal with Egyptian intermediaries' failures in state service.

In response, Art. 15 of Qānūn al-Filāḥa passed in 1830 stipulated that … In the event of a fellah hiding himself among the bedouins, wearing their clothes, and being discovered among them afterward . . . the tribesman who hides him will be conscripted into the military service if he is a young man (shabb), and if an old man (ikhtiyār), he will be sent to jail (Liman) for six months.

Pays off: "Egyptian military law lacked provisions governing sodomy in 1824."

Ironically, having been employed by the government to help create a tightly supervised and controlled army, the bedouins often proved to be a menace for the authorities who frequently had to employ the army itself against various tribes to bring them under control. Relying on the baltaci ortas (sappers’ regiments) to undertake the same task, namely guarding the soldiers in their camps, was not very effective since they, as much as other regiments, were rampant with desertion.

XREF: Extends the earlier claim at loc 661 that bedouin tribal guards proved unreliable, showing the irony that the men hired to enforce control became the authorities' own menace. Builds on: "Bedouin tribal guards proved unreliable and prone to desertion."

Gradually the authorities came to realize that what was needed was a system of control and surveillance that would be similar to that reached to circumvent the role of the village shaykhs reviewed in the last chapter. Rather than depending on sentry guards and bedouin patrols catching deserters, the aim was to imprint on the minds of the soldiers the idea of internment in the first place and to subject them to a regime of surveillance that would make obedience and discipline seem natural and be habitually practiced. That system, it was hoped, would target the minds of the recruits and not only their bodies; a system that would, in the words of an eighteenth-century French military thinker, bind them “by the chain of their own ideas” rather than “constrain them with iron chains.”

XREF: Connects to the earlier claim about conscription's resistance forcing Egypt's shift to subtle control techniques (loc 490) and to the Foucauldian theme of internalized discipline present throughout this chapter. DEFINE: Clarifies the shift in disciplinary philosophy from physical constraint to mental conditioning—imprinting obedience as habitual and natural. Builds on: "Conscription's resistance forced Egypt's shift to subtle control techniques."

The first incident is recounted by Henry Salt, the British Consul-General in the 1820s, and concerns an officer, a certain Kurd Ali, who, after being taken prisoner by his soldiers because of a delay in the distribution of their pay, talked them into ending their mutiny and giving themselves up since “it could be of no service but only involve them in rebellion and certain ruin.” After he had freed himself he “seized two of the ringleaders, cut off their heads and put some thirty of the rest in prison.” The officer under his command subsequently released them from prison telling them that those who chose “to serve the Pasha and rest in obedience” might stay and return to their duties; as for those who did not want to stay they would be free to leave the camp. “On this a part of the thirty prepared to leave the camp, when an order was given to fire upon them and they were for the most part slaughtered.”

Admittedly, the brutality used to punish the soldiers who attempted to leave the camp in this case might be due to the fact that they had mutinied and had gone so far as to hold their commanding officer prisoner. This case is significant, however, for it shows that the regime of internment that was based on the actual or implicit threat of the use of force was not effective: it proved inadequate to deter the soldiers from passing out of the gates of the camp. What was aimed for was a system that would have the very idea of internment and of the impossibility of desertion imprinted on the minds of the soldiers so as to prevent them from escaping in the first place and to spare the authorities having recourse to this kind of brutal force.

XREF: Builds on the earlier point that surveillance aimed to bind soldiers' minds rather than just bodies (loc 664), and that punishment shifted to ensuring no crime escapes (loc 628). SEED: The failure of coercive force to deter desertion — and its replacement by internalized discipline — offers a rich angle on how punitive regimes must give way to ideological control. Builds on: "Surveillance aimed to bind soldiers' minds, not just bodies."

Immediately after the fall of Acre in May 1832 the Egyptian soldiers we saw at the beginning of this chapter as an organized, well-trained and highly disciplined body of troops who enabled Ibrahim to accomplish what Napoleon failed to do thirty years earlier, these very same soldiers went on the rampage looting the city, attacking its inhabitants, and destroying their property. All semblance of order and discipline disappeared in the havoc that followed and a large number of soldiers seized the opportunity to desert the army altogether. Ahmed Bey, the Colonel of the 10th Regiment, who was appointed in charge of the fortress of Acre after its fall, wrote to Ibrahim Pasha complaining of the situation, and instead of requesting the dispatch of bedouin troops to catch the deserters, he suggested a simple, but effective solution: a roll-call (tadad), he said, should be taken twice a day; those found missing would be recorded as firar, i.e. as deserters, and when found a day or more later the penalty for desertion would be inflicted on them.

DEFINE: Tadad (roll-call) defined as a twice-daily headcount marking absentees as deserters subject to penalty. Builds on: "Egyptian military law lacked provisions governing sodomy in 1824."

Rather, it testifies to what Foucault calls in his Discipline and Punish a shift from spectacular to representational and finally to disciplinary punishment. What informed this shift was not the humane, rational and progressive ideals of the Enlightenment as much as the need to make the power of the sovereign (in this case Mehmed Ali) tolerable and acceptable to his subjects. For “power is tolerable only on condition that it mask a substantial part of itself.” Hence this shift to what appears as a humane execution of the law was in fact a shift to a more cunning, cynical and hidden kind of power.

XREF: Connects to earlier highlight at loc 490 about conscription's resistance forcing Egypt's shift to subtle control techniques, and loc 664 about surveillance aiming to bind soldiers' minds. Builds on: "Conscription's resistance forced Egypt's shift to subtle control techniques."

In this respect there was nothing unique or strange in such corporal and spectacular “liturgies of power” in Mehmed Ali’s army. Indeed, a lot of army and naval laws passed in Europe in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries were characterized by this emphasis on brutal force in the application of punishment. The 1652 Articles of War, for example, which were applied to the British navy and which formed the basis of all subsequent naval laws, “sound exceedingly fierce in the reading, for of the thirty-nine articles one-third carry the death penalty without alternative, and in another third of them death looms as a possibility.”

In Mehmed Ali's Egypt the different orders of the Pasha and the various laws that were issued during his reign also reveal that punishment, when applied in the civilian sector, was often characterized by an excessive, and probably unwarranted, use of force. Qānūn al-Filāḥa, for example, which was passed to deal with offenses relating mostly to damages to public property, land cultivation and the conduct of public employees, stipulated in twenty-six of its fifty-five articles the use of the kurbāj, the whip.

In one incident, for example, when the protracted siege of Acre caused disquiet in Cairo and rumors started spreading among the civilian population, Mehmed Ali ordered three people to be beheaded and their bodies to be hanged on one of the old gates of Cairo with labels on their breasts reading “This is the fate which awaits those who cannot govern their tongues.” During the Syrian uprising against Mehmed Ali's rule in 1834 a man was hanged and left hanging for a long time for spreading rumors.

XREF: Connects with earlier claims about brutal corporal punishment (loc 671) and coercive state control techniques over populations (loc 490, 669). Builds on: "Brutal corporal punishment typified early modern European military law."

When Mehmed Ali heard about this he was so furious that he expelled this governor from public service. He explained that he did so not because of the brutality of the punishment, but because he was not authorized to do so by the Pasha in person. Here we come at another logic of these “inhumane,” severe corporal punishments. They were seen as acts of retribution exacted by the Sovereign against someone who dared to violate his wishes.

DEFINE: Clarifies the logic behind 'inhumane' corporal punishments — they were ritual retribution by the Sovereign for challenging his wishes, authorized only by the Pasha himself. Pays off: "Masking power's mechanisms makes domination more tolerable and effective."

The Pasha is saying that he takes these offenses very seriously because he considers them an attack on his sovereign person. It is his “momentarily injured sovereignty” that had to be avenged and the public punishment was seen as a way of reconstituting this sovereignty.

Builds on: "Corporal punishment signified the Sovereign's personal authority, not cruelty."

Similarly, in an effort to stop the 1824 rebellion from spreading further Mehmed Ali wrote to the governor of Isna in Upper Egypt ordering him to hang some of the elderly or disabled villagers at the entrances of their villages to be a deterrent to others. The choice of the elderly and disabled was explained by saying that “they were useless and could not perform any task.”

QUESTION: The utilitarian justification — that the elderly were 'useless' — reveals how Mehmed Ali's state valued human life purely by productive capacity. Worth tracing this logic further. XREF: Connects to the earlier claim at loc 675 about public punishment reasserting sovereign authority, and loc 669 about masking power's mechanisms. This is exemplary punishment escalated to deterrence against rebellion. Builds on: "Public punishment reasserted the sovereign's momentarily injured authority."

When the extent of maiming to avoid conscription became known and when it was reported that it was the wives and mothers of the potential conscripts who were assisting them to maim themselves, Mehmed Ali ordered these women to be hanged at village entrances “so as to be an example to others.”

QUESTION: The gendered dimension of resistance is striking — wives and mothers actively helped men maim themselves, suggesting a family-level or communal resistance network beyond individual desertion. Worth exploring how gender channels resistance and punishment. Builds on: "Conscripts universally resisted through desertion and self-inflicted wounds."

Having mounted his splendid horse, he saluted everyone, bowing gracefully to the crowd on either side. This conduct greatly surprised the people, who, when their previous pashas condescended to walk abroad, had been obliged to bend the knee, and bow the head, scarcely daring to raise their eyes, until the August presence had passed by.

XREF: Builds on loc 59 about pasha reception rituals staging power through shadow and spectacle — here Muhammad Ali deliberately inverts that ritual by bowing to the crowd. Pays off: "Pasha reception rituals staged power through deliberate shadow and spectacle."

Moreover, the Pasha was never content to sit in the Citadel managing affairs from afar. Never completely satisfied with the reports that he was receiving regularly, he constantly went on inspection tours to investigate things for himself. His visits were rarely announced in advance, giving rise to a feeling among his officials that the Pasha was omnipresent and all-knowing. Just like the stories woven around his physical person which we read in the Introduction, those unannounced visits helped to usher in his presence and to mark the areas he visited “like some wolf or tiger spreading his scent through his territory.”

XREF: Builds on loc 59's note about Pasha reception rituals staging power through spectacle—here the unannounced visits are a complementary technique of surveilling and projecting omnipresence. Builds on: "Pasha reception rituals staged power through deliberate shadow and spectacle."

The spectacular use of the culprit’s body as a deterrent or as a site of retribution, however, had its own limitations. After all, the body of the culprit can sustain only a limited amount of pain that may or may not be an effective deterrent to others from committing a similar offense. Furthermore, for this kind of deterrence to work the spectacle had to be massive and the audience great, hence the public hangings in big squares and important gathering places in urban centers. This, again, had its limitations, since only a limited number of people could be present at any one moment to watch the spectacle.

Builds on: "Public punishment reasserted the sovereign's momentarily injured authority."

What was targeted now was the minds of the populace and not their “gazes.” The goal was to “represent” the Pasha in his absence and to use the law as an ever-potent symbol expressing his wish and desire. In this more subtle manifestation of power “the ‘mind’ [is used] as a surface of inscription for power . . .; the submission of bodies [is brought about] through the control of ideas; [and] the analysis of representations as a principle in a politics of bodies [becomes] much more effective than the ritual anatomy of torture and execution.”

By defining offenses, fixing scales of punishments, identifying who in the bureaucratic-legal hierarchy is to execute the punishment, the legal code also functions as one of the ever-potent tools of power. By creating a mental association of crime and punishment, the legal code instills in the minds of people the feeling of the inevitability of punishment and its link to the crime being performed.

Builds on: "Public punishment reasserted the sovereign's momentarily injured authority."

The Liman of Alexandria thus became an internment house, a huge prison, housing a variety of people who were banished from their habitual locales. At one point the Arsenal had between five and six thousand people. Most of those imprisoned there were interned for some offense that they had committed and were mostly kept there by the explicit wish of the Pasha: an amnesty issued by Mehmed Ali was all that was needed to free the detainees regardless of the crime that they might have committed or the danger that they were supposed to have posed to society. Furthermore, the conditions of their imprisonment were far from healthy; at one time an investigation had to be undertaken to determine why a large number of the prisoners were dying.

Builds on: "Spectacular public punishment lost power to deter vast populations."

The Liman of Alexandria came to represent the internment policy of the civilian authorities in a very physical way. It was a prison that was interning all kinds of people that the authorities had declared "outlaws." This undifferentiated internment of "alienated" beings is partially due to the fact that a lot of those interned were so interned not because they violated a given law but because the sovereign, Mehmed Ali, decreed so after their cases were brought in front of him. More importantly, however, the generic law that functioned as the original penal code, namely Qānūn al-Filāḥa, was itself an undifferentiated, ungraded, non-codified legal text that retained a lot of the features characterizing old civilian laws. The frequent use of the whip and the bastinado, as well as the type of imprisonment explained above, points to the fact that the main aim of such law and its appendices was to make the Pasha's "presence" visible precisely by highlighting the "absence" of those who dared to violate his wish as represented in the law. In this case the Liman, like Mount Fayzuğlu, was a place of banishment and exile, not a place of correction and rehabilitation. Rather than bringing about a close association of crime and punishment in the minds of the populace, civilian laws as exemplified by this one were aimed at terrifying the people into submission by resorting to the image of the prison looming above society and reminding them of the fate of those who violated the law. So impressive was the idea of that prison in the Egyptians' mentality that the word "Liman," which in Turkish means simply a port or harbor, came to be synonymous with "prison." It still retains this meaning in Egyptian Arabic down to the present time.

XREF: Builds directly on loc 674-677 and 688-691 on civilian punishment's sovereign-terror logic, showing how the Liman and Fayzuğlu served banishment rather than correction. Builds on: "Public punishment reasserted the sovereign's momentarily injured authority."

In contrast to Qānūn al-Filāḥa the various military codes passed to regulate different aspects of life in the army attempted to draw a closer link between crime and punishment. To ensure blind obedience to its regulations, Mehmed Ali's army could not rely on the blurred definition of crime or the haphazard application of punishment that characterized a number of laws passed to regulate aspects of civilian life. A number of laws, therefore, were passed each dealing with a specific aspect of military life and each giving detailed definitions of various offenses and the exact corresponding punishments.

Builds on: "Egyptian military law lacked provisions governing sodomy in 1824."

The first thing that strikes one when reading this law is that it was tabulated with the main divisions being those of the type of offender: students and NCOs, officers and teachers. For every one of these divisions the law is further subdivided into three divisions: the offense (cürm ve zenub), its corresponding punishment (tedibat), and the officer who is to execute the punishment (müeddib). The mere form the law now takes, the table, strongly leads the mind to the correspondence between crime and punishment. The law is no longer a collection of articles loosely connected to each other whose only order is the chronology of their promulgation; rather, the very form it takes shows the gradual realization that the effectiveness of the punishment stems not from its spectacular severity but from its inevitability; "it is the certainty of being punished and not the horrifying spectacle of public punishment that must discourage crime." Furthermore, there is a conspicuous absence of bodily punishment and a reliance instead on imprisonment. Out of the eighty-nine articles of the law, only four articles resorted to the whip as a punishment. These were reserved for the punishment of desertion and sodomy.

XREF: Directly extends the theme from loc 691 and 699 that legal codes instill perceived certainty and precisely calibrate punishments. Also builds on loc 688 about spectacular punishment losing deterrent power. Builds on: "Legal codes instill perceived certainty of punishment to discipline minds."

The second law, Qānūn al-Dākhiliyya, passed in 1834 as a generic law to organize the military camps, showed a much more refined conception of imprisonment. Instead of lumping together all offenders in one place for long periods, this law specified that there were to be three kinds of imprisonment. Art. 361 stipulated that, firstly, there was “light house arrest” (ḥabs ai-‘ayn al-khafīf) which should not exceed two months and in which the wrongdoer was kept aside in his own chamber and not allowed to be visited by anyone. Secondly, there was “heavy house arrest” (ḥabs al-‘ayn al-thaqīl) which was limited to one month and in which the offender was to be kept aside in his own chamber with a sentry watching him and in which he was not allowed to speak to anyone. Finally, there was imprisonment in the camp jail, the ḥabskhāna, which should not exceed fifteen days.

Builds on: "Military codes precisely calibrated offenses to their exact punishments."

It is clear that a change has taken place in the meaning and intention of punishment where it was no longer seen as a means of exacting vengeance from the offender, or a way by which the sovereign attempted to restore his momentarily injured sovereignty; rather, it became a way of making sure that no crime went unpunished. This new conception of punishment, represented in the specific example of imprisonment and internment in general, reflected a change in the meaning of discipline and the ways to bring it about. To create a body of disciplined troops, the authorities initially relied on the use of brutal force so as to terrify the soldiers into submission. This was not without its effects and it undoubtedly succeeded in keeping a lot of the soldiers in their places. Reliance on physical force alone, however, could not ensure that the techniques of discipline had sunk deep into the minds of the soldiers. At a certain stage the effectiveness of the brutal use of force was questioned and other abstract, non-physical modes of imposing discipline were brought into play.

This shift to more “representational” types of control and surveillance was not unique to the Egyptian army. In Europe of the eighteenth century this gradual realization that punishment “should strike the soul rather than the body” is best shown in the debates surrounding British naval discipline that followed the mutinies of 1797. Representative of the new voices of skepticism are the works of Philip Patton who wrote a number of pamphlets criticizing, among other things, the regime of punishment and the system of discipline applied in the Royal Navy. “Whatever may be the influence of [fear],” he wrote, “it has been found insufficient to produce concord . . . and it can never procure unanimity in arduous situations which integrity and the social virtues tend directly to establish in all cases whatever.”

XREF: Connects to the book's earlier claims about Egyptian penal reform shifting from bodily to psychological control (loc 690, 704). Builds on: "What was targeted now was the minds of the populace and not their “gazes."

For this strict regime of control to succeed the soldiers had first to be “fixed” in positions assigned to them. This was done through a number of techniques. First the soldiers were each given a number by which they were identified. It was not enough simply to register the names and physical descriptions of the soldiers in every regiment to be able to control them; each soldier came to be identified by a number he was given, i.e. the place he occupied in the bigger unit. The army payrolls were also numbered accordingly and when these registers were not properly prepared, it proved impossible to know how much every soldier was to be paid as well as how often to issue him a new uniform.

It was through the processes reviewed so far that it proved possible to impose order on the new recruits and to turn the peasants into disciplined soldiers. Passing laws with a strict punishment regime was not sufficient for the soldiers to internalize the different army regulations that they were asked to obey. For this to succeed these soldiers had to be interned and isolated from outside influences. Then they had to be "fixed" in their positions through such devices as the timetable and the weekly schedule.

Builds on: "Egyptian military law lacked provisions governing sodomy in 1824."

Specific instructions were given concerning the sanitation of the soldiers' lodgings: "The barracks has to be built on dry, high ground. It has to be well ventilated . . . and its windows have to be facing each other so that the air can pass through." When these regulations failed, as indeed they had when, for example, a big rise in the cases of syphilis (frengi) and scabies (cereb) was recorded among the soldiers, Clot Bey, in another specially printed manual, ordered army doctors to inspect their men, soldiers, NCOs and officers to isolate those afflicted with either of these two diseases.

DEFINE: Defines Clot Bey's role in developing medical inspection manuals that addressed specific diseases like syphilis and scabies among soldiers. Builds on: "Laws alone failed to discipline recruits into internalizing army regulations."

What we are witnessing here is more than simply an attempt to maintain a healthy sanitary environment; this is the first manifestation of a new kind of power that exhibited itself on the body of the conscript, not in the spectacular way of his being beaten in front of his battalion, but in a more subtle, diffuse and cynical way. This is what Foucault calls "disciplinary power," disciplinary not only because it attempts to manage the body (of the citizen and the conscript alike), but also in the sense that it created disciplines, discourses, that took the body of the individual to be its primary concern, e.g. medicine, psychology, criminology, etc.

DEFINE: Foucault's 'disciplinary power' is defined as subtle, diffuse, and cynical—targeting the body through disciplines like medicine, psychology, and criminology—as opposed to spectacular public punishment. Builds on: "What was targeted now was the minds of the populace and not their “gazes."

In 1824 Mehmed Bey, the colonel of one of the first six regiments of Mehmed Ali's new army, wrote to the Pasha telling him he had a problem with those who committed sodomy: should he treat them as adulterers (and thus apply the punishment for adultery on them) or should he apply a different law? Mehmed Ali responded by saying that the colonel had to consult the military regulations and apply what they said. The problem was that by that time the military regulations and laws that had been translated and published in the Būlāq Press made no mention of sodomy or how to deal with it. What Mehmed Bey had at his disposal was either to apply the sharī'a with its punishment of either death or ta'zīr, i.e. chastisement, or the Old Ottoman Criminal Code which stipulated in its different versions either chastisement or castration.

DEFINE: Clarifies ta'zir as chastisement within shari'a law terminology. Builds on: "Egyptian military law lacked provisions governing sodomy in 1824."

The shift to the final form of power, disciplinary power, can be detected by looking at the various letters and injunctions that Clot Bey wrote to address the issue of homosexuality in military schools. His main concern was with syphilis which, he said, was getting out of control since there was no law that forced prostitutes to be medically examined, prompting men "to replace them [i.e. the afflicted women] with a greater vice that is against human nature, by which we mean those young boys who, on the pretext of [public] dancing, commit what is improper [even] to be said." What was of concern to Clot Bey, besides the affront to decency and public morals, was the cost to the government resulting from treating the syphilitic young boys, as well as the time they had to spend away from their lessons to be treated in the Qaṣr al-'Ainī Military Hospital.

Builds on: "Disciplinary power operates subtly on bodies, not spectacularly."

In dealing with homosexual violations in the army the authorities never resorted to the spectacular way of castrating the offender that was suggested in the Old Ottoman Criminal Code. To deal with these and other violations the authorities had recourse to a different kind of power, and to a different set of tools by which they attempted to control and manipulate the body of the conscript in a subtle, more cynical manner. By viewing transgressors not as individuals who were to be spectacularly punished, banned or exiled from public space but as subjects to be studied, understood and ultimately cured, the authorities managed to transform the body of the offender from one on which punishment was exhibited to one that became the domain of scholarly, professional concern, and around which disciplines and discourses were produced.

XREF: Directly extends the Foucaultian disciplinary-power thread traced in loc 728 and loc 731, showing how spectacular punishment was replaced by scholarly intervention. Builds on: "Disciplinary power shifted concern toward disease, cost, and productivity."

When Ibrahim Pasha reminded his soldiers of their duties before storming the fortress of Acre in May 1832, he significantly urged them to listen to their commanders' orders and execute them without thinking. For the unit of the army to function as a unit, be it a company, battalion, or regiment, the combined forces of the soldiers had to be carefully measured and meticulously directed. This, in turn, necessitated the formulation of a system whereby the soldiers would be trained to obey orders in a mechanical way, without pausing to think of their meaning. During battle seconds count and a delay in minutes can dramatically change the outcome.

Builds on: "Ibrahim Pasha's battlefield conduct followed strict procedural discipline."

Since only a minority of the new soldiers are by nature (fī muqtaḍa al-khilqa) similar to each other in terms of the size of their shoulders, chests or thighs, the officer training them, before giving them their weapons and teaching them how to stand attentively (hazir dur), must to do his best to rectify these defects and amend them (iṣlāḥ al-quṣūr wa taṣlīḥahu).

XREF: Builds on loc 711's numbered identity and loc 734's mechanical obedience by extending disciplinary power to bodily standardization before weapon training. Builds on: "Mechanical obedience training made soldiers function as a single unit."

The ankles of every soldier must be close to each other and be aligned on a straight line . . . and the angle between the foot and that line should be acute . . . The body must be as straight as a post. The shoulders must be held back and the elbows must touch his body. The palms must be turned outward a little, and the little finger must be placed along the plaited cord (qītān) of the pocket of the trousers. The head must be held upright with no fatigue in such a way that the chin be close to the neck, but without covering it. The eyes have to be looking ahead at a distance of approximately fifteen feet.

XREF: Builds on loc 736 (officers reshaped elite recruits' bodies) and loc 734 (mechanical obedience training), extending bodily micro-control to even stance and eye gaze. Builds on: "Officers reshaped elite recruits' bodies to enforce physical uniformity."

All the movements of the soldiers, however small, however minute, were punctuated by the command shouts and performed according to their rhythms. "The single shout, although constituting one command, has to be divided into sections so that the soldiers can grasp the complexity of the movement and act in unison. Every single action should be performed within half a second." These actions were to be performed immediately on hearing the shouts issued by the officer.

Builds on: "Precise bodily stances made soldiers function as identical machine parts."

Training manuals, nevertheless, were the tools by which this goal was finally reached. By specifying the detailed manner in which the most basic acts were to be performed, these texts brought about a much stricter way of disciplining the soldiers. Through observing and controlling the most simple act (the glance) of the soldiers, and by manipulating their actions, breaking them down to their constituent units, and then ordering them to be executed according to the signals issued by the officers in the form of the command shouts, the body of the soldier was finally reduced to performing a function similar to that of a cog in a machine. The soldier ceased to be an individual, an integral human being and instead he came to occupy a unified slot, a standard position that did not, in fact, should not differ from that of any other soldier.

Builds on: "Timed command execution synchronized soldiers into coordinated unitary action."

The training manual thus helped to bring about this regime of disciplinary power that Foucault refers to in his Discipline and Punish. In the manual the body of the conscript is subjected to a meticulous ordering that manipulated every movement he made, no matter how small or inconsequential. Moreover, it also helped create this metaphysical effect that Mitchell refers to in his argument about enframing, for the different military laws, regulations and training manuals reviewed above aimed at organizing the daily lives of the troops, their activities and their drills in such a way that it offered a spectacle of order, regularity and intervals.

Builds on: "Training manuals disciplined soldiers down to their individual glances."

It seems that it had undergone a transitional meaning that is now lost, that of corvėe, or forced labor; see John Wilkinson, Modern Egypt, I, p. 431. Mehmed Ali, he says, is to be distinguished for being “the first to substitute forced labor (luman) for capital punishments.”

DEFINE: Clarifies that 'luman' had a transitional meaning of corvée/forced labor, and that Mehmed Ali was credited with substituting it for capital punishment.

A recent study of Napoleon's Grande Armée finds that a lot of its campaigns were highly improvised, with corruption, looting, arrears in pay and low morale hitting it and affecting its performance years before the disastrous Russian campaign of 1812.

XREF: Challenges the romanticized image of Napoleon's army as an efficient war machine, parallel to how the book dismantles romanticized views of Mehmed Ali's army. SEED: A counter-narrative essay on famous armies' improvised, corrupt realities could challenge popular military-history mythmaking.

Sustaining an army of around 130,000 men on a more or less constant war footing was no easy task, though. … This massive task demanded the build-up of state power to an extent unprecedented in Egyptian history and an encroachment by the state on people's lives in a way previously unparalleled.

XREF: Connects to earlier claims about centralized provisioning and state-society relations (loc 418) and nation-state formation requiring monopolized violence (loc 119). Builds on: "Centralized provisioning and conscription altered state-society relations."

The Ottoman forces numbered 53,000 men and were headed by the Sadrazam Raşid Pasha himself. Ibrahim's army was composed of less than a third of that number, 15,000 men.

XREF: Builds on the earlier claim at loc 251 about Egypt routing the Ottomans at Konya; this specific force disparity quantifies that watershed victory. Builds on: "Egypt's army decisively routed the Ottomans at the Battle of Konya."

The battle of Konia in December 1832 was undoubtedly one of Ibrahim Pasha's greatest military victories. Right in the middle of Anatolia, that is, hundreds of miles away from home and in the midst of severe cold weather, he succeeded in inflicting a heavy defeat on an army that was three times as large as his own. In addition, he managed to capture the Sadrazam, Mehmed Raşid Pasha, who was leading the Ottoman army himself. After the successful conclusion of the seven-hour battle the road to Istanbul was wide open and there was no significant Ottoman military force that could have stopped Ibrahim Pasha from marching on to the capital of the Ottoman Empire.

Such is the way that the famous Egyptian military historian, 'Abdel-Raḥmān Zakī, chooses to narrate the battle of Konia. The reason for reproducing his account of the battle more or less in full is that it represents clearly a style of writing the history of wars and campaigns that was once described by the leading European military historian, John Keegan, as "the battle piece." Such accounts typically portray battles as orderly and organized events in which thousands of men are moved around on the battle plain in neat machine-like precision. Essentially bloody, tense and chaotic happenings, battles are transformed in these accounts into orderly events which are executed exactly as planned, and in which the successful commander is he who is able to conceive of the better plan and to stick to it.

DEFINE: Introduces the concept of 'the battle piece' as a genre of military history writing. Builds on: "Napoleon's Grande Armée campaigns were heavily improvised and troubled."

In representing the minor skirmish that took place between the vanguards of the Egyptian and Turkish armies two days before the battle of Konia, for example, Kani Bey, assistant to Osman Nureddin, the Chief of Staff, followed the same simplistic procedure: the Egyptian units were drawn in nice and neat squares, red rectangles for the infantry, and yellow ones for the cavalry. The Turkish troops were represented by rectangles that were scattered with no order all over the map.

XREF: Builds directly on loc 902's claim about battle pieces recasting chaotic combat as orderly planned execution — this map example is one specific instance of that general pattern. Pays off: "Battle pieces recast chaotic combat as orderly planned execution."

Most significantly, "battle pieces" are always written from the viewpoint of the commanding officer. A sign of a good commander is his ability to think in abstract terms, to see units rather than individuals, to notice flags and banners rather than the men doing the actual fighting and killing, and to impose the map he so well rehearsed reading before the battle on the rugged terrain he now sees in front of him. Soldiers for him are not visible; instead what he sees are their battalions, regiments, and divisions; groups of men that he maneuvres around within the confined arena of the battle field and in the limited time he has. The soldier appears in these classical pieces of military history following orders with "no sudden burst of undisciplined valour." He obeys orders, acts in unison with his fellow soldiers and together he marches forward with them to "engage with the enemy." In other words, the "battle piece" portrays the soldier as the kind of man that the training manual we saw in the last chapter wanted the conscript to become: a man robbed of his instinctive reactions who shows no fear, feels no grief; is moved by no horror; instead he appears as a characterless, machine-like, alienated being.

Builds on: "Battle pieces recast chaotic combat as orderly planned execution."

When confronted with these accusations he denied the charges and blamed Hüseyin Bey, the colonel of the 1st Cavalry Regiment, instead. Moreover, he attempted to bribe some of the soldiers and NCOs of his brigade to witness in his favor during the court martial and when they betrayed him he spat in their faces in front of the tribunal. Having proved all the charges against him, namely, violating military rules regarding his location during battle, giving a false account about it to the tribunal, and finally insulting his soldiers and NCOs, Ahmed Bey was only demoted one rank to the rank of miralay (colonel), "as a punishment for him and a deterrent to his peers (kindisi tedip ve akranlarınıs terhip olmak)" although the same document says that according to military law he was supposed to be executed.

XREF: Connects to the earlier highlights about Egyptian military law's taut crime-punishment calibration (loc 628, 699, 704). Here, actual application diverges sharply from the code — the ta� laws promised execution but delivered a one-rank demotion for a senior officer, showing law's force was class-stratified. Pays off: "Military codes precisely calibrated offenses to their exact punishments."

The picture that evolves out of this single document is very different from that which is usually portrayed: "horses were trembling when the enemy fired their volleys at us," "we had to retreat here and there to avoid the fire of the enemy," "the colonel was late in ordering the trumpeter to issue the call to take the line formation." These and other statements in this single document show that what the soldiers experienced was fear, confusion, agony, a far cry from the neat and orderly impression one gets from the "battle piece." Most importantly, the account of the court martial goes on to reveal that Brigadier Ahmed Bey was not to be found in the position specified for him in the training manuals which give exact locations of every officer during battle. Zakī, in his account of the battle and in an attempt to explain this rather perplexing absence, says that that brigade lost its way in the fog. On investigation, however, it transpires that Brigadier Ahmed Bey had fled the battle scene with his entire brigade probably to await the result of the battle and then side with the victor.

XREF: Builds on the earlier claims (loc 902-904) that battle pieces and cartographic orders erased the chaos of real combat; this court-martial document is the primary evidence of that erasure. Builds on: "Battle pieces erase soldiers into abstract tactical units for commanders."

The main question that this chapter attempts to answer is the following: how faithfully did the daily workings of that army approach the blueprints that were regularly issued to guide it and organize its functioning? Using the training manuals, penal codes and military laws that were reviewed in the last chapter can be a good way to write the institutional history of Mehmed Ali's army. They can also be useful in writing the history of mentalities, the aims and goals of those who were structuring it. However, they offer little insight into how this institution actually worked and how it was received by the society into which it was introduced.

It does not start with how “insightful” the great Pasha was or how ahead of his time he might have been. Instead, it argues that the Pasha, besides issuing often impressive, orderly regulations, was also under severe time and financial constraints that frequently forced him to deviate from the very laws he was issuing. Moreover, between the “insightful” command of the Pasha in his palace in Cairo and the soldier on the field or in his barracks stood hundreds of officers and commanders.

XREF: Builds on the recurring theme (loc 41, 115) of the gap between plan and execution in Muhammad Ali's administration.

On a number of other occasions we see the Pasha using the army to impress the spectator, whether a foreign visitor or the local population of a conquered country. When in 1827, for example, the Pasha was visited by Süleyman Pasha, the vali of Crete, orders were issued to the Director of the War Department to chose 200 of the best officers, have them wear their “ceremonial uniforms” (kisvet-i divaniye) and stage a small parade for the visitor to watch. Shortly after the fall of Acre in May 1832, the fortress was visited by an English officer who had recently arrived from Egypt. To impress him, orders were issued to all officers and soldiers in the castle to put on their new uniforms and “to be in the most perfect order.”

XREF: Builds on the earlier claim that Pasha reception rituals staged power through deliberate shadow and spectacle (loc 59). Builds on: "Pasha reception rituals staged power through deliberate shadow and spectacle."

In the early years of the army Mehmed Ali could not afford to wait till all his officers learned how to read and write. He wrote to Ibrahim Pasha telling him that “although the European armies have literate officers and engineers, we cannot afford to do the same when we establish our new regiments.” Eventually, however, literacy, and (oddly enough) good handwriting became a condition for promotion, and it was decided that all candidates should provide samples of their handwriting for the Pasha to make sure that they were indeed literate.

Builds on: "Mehmed Ali's illiteracy shaped his written record's spontaneous character."

Ibrahim Pasha devised a postal system that was intended to keep his father in constant touch with the army. Ibrahim divided the distance between the army HQ in Syria and Cairo into twelve equal intervals; at the end of each a postal station was to be built. In each of these stations an official was to be appointed and given a silver watch to check if the postmen relaying the letters between the stations arrived on time or not. In implementing this new order, however, it was discovered that although the postmen to be appointed to these new stations should have been able to read and write, not enough literate officials could be found to man them. To save time, it was decided to choose some officials and teach them the numbers from one to twelve only so as to be able to check on whether the postmen arrived on time or not. It is doubtful whether an illiterate official who only knew the numbers from one to twelve could use a watch, silver or otherwise, and write a report about the punctuality of mail. What appears in principle to have been a modern way to deal with time and space, with time measured in minutes and seconds and space divided up into uniform, standardized distances, turns out to have been compromised in its implementation owing to serious pressing factors.

XREF: Connects to earlier claims about armies depending on multilingual bureaucrats (loc 111) and the literate skills required for officer promotion (loc 914). SEED: The gap between modern administrative design and illiterate personnel executing it offers a vivid episode for writing about technology transfer in pre-industrial states. Builds on: "Armies depend on multilingual bureaucrats, nurses, and sentries to function."

Ibrahim was repeatedly urging him to send him ammunition and supplies promptly “so as not to suffer from the lack of ammunition as I used to do while in the Morea.” His father answered him by saying that he was doing everything possible to meet his requests. Ibrahim replied by saying that it seemed that Engineer Cerisy, who was in charge of the Arsenal in Alexandria, was very slow in preparing ships and sending them to Syria because he was insisting on doing things the “French way.” He proposed to hand over the task of preparing the ships to Hajj ‘Umar because we do not have time to organize our affairs along French lines. What we need now is to prepare our ships with cannons and other supplies. When we finish our business here, and His Highness becomes the [undisputed] lord of these areas, then we can prepare our ships along French and English lines. Only then will we have ample time to do this.

XREF: Connects to the earlier claims about Mehmed Ali's French influence being mediated through Ottoman adoption (loc 425) and choosing Ottoman models over Napoleonic organization (loc 428). Ibrahim here explicitly rejects French ways for local expedience. Builds on: "Mehmed Ali's French influence was mediated through Ottoman adoption."

Mehmed Ali had no problems with this kind of logic and, keen as he was to follow the models he was borrowing from, he was aware of the practical problems he had to contend with. Similarly, impressive and spectacular as he might have found his new army, he was not bound by its visual order nor was he taken in by its spectacles. For example, when in 1824 he detected signs of a serious mutiny among his newly founded army he knew that he had to take some drastic measures to deal decisively with such an alarming situation. In doing so he showed that he understood something about the effect that orderly spectacles had, but that he was not bound by the idea of order that informed them, nor by the principle of “cynical,” diffuse power (in the manner used by Foucault) that is also linked to them. For he then ordered all the soldiers of the regiment in question (the 1st Regiment that was on its way to Sudan) to stand in a row and every tenth soldier to step out of line. The soldiers thus selected would then form a line of their own and be shot in front of their colleagues “to be an example to others.”

Builds on: "Egyptian governors' propaganda tours augmented the army's deterrence value."

In another case on 2 August 1832 a court martial was convened to try two officers from the 7th and 8th Infantry Regiments which were fighting in Syria at that time. The first case concerned a certain adjutant-major of the 8th Regiment, Mehmed Efendi by name, who had deserted from his regiment during battle. Although the law stipulated that in such cases the offender should be executed, the court martial ordered Mehmed Efendi to be sent to the Liman for life. The second case concerned another officer, Raşid Ağa, a second lieutenant of the 7th Regiment, who had deserted for the third time. The court martial changed the original sentence stated in the law (execution) to lashing and a three-month imprisonment. Seeing that there was a discrepancy in the application of the law, since the offense in both cases was the same (desertion) whereas two different sentences were passed on the same day, Mehmed Ali sent a strongly worded letter to Mahmud Bey, the Director of the War Department, ordering him to tell the members of the court martial to follow the letter of the law. At the same time, however, he said that these two officers should be sent to the Liman for life, although he acknowledged that the law said that they should be executed. A dead man was of no use to the Pasha, whereas a trained officer on whose education and training the Pasha had spent valuable money could, if sentenced to hard labor in the Liman for life, at least be of some value in the form of productive hard work.

XREF: Connects to the earlier highlight at loc 911 about time and financial constraints forcing the Pasha to deviate from his own laws, and loc 628 on crime-punishment linkage. Builds on: "Time and financial constraints forced the Pasha to deviate from his own laws."

When Mehmed Ali was informed of the case he wondered why the letter of the law (which stipulated that in such cases the offender should be imprisoned for five years) has not been implemented, especially since it was Rifā‘a Bey and not an ordinary officer who was involved. To this Mohtar Bey answered saying that the reason for not executing the letter of the law was that he felt that since Abdallah Efendi had previously been sent to France and given that the government had incurred considerable expense in sending him on this mission, it would not have been very wise to expel him from school. Mehmed Ali did not like this answer and said that the student in question should be given three hundred lashes and then expelled from school. He explained this harsh treatment by saying that Rifā‘a Bey had trained many people with the rank of captain; in effect, that it was more profitable to appease him than be concerned about the money spent on the student.

XREF: Connects to earlier highlights about Mehmed Ali's utilitarian calculus of officers (loc 920) and his harsh discipline of the army (loc 919). DEFINE: Illustrates how Mehmed Ali weighed trained officers' value against the expense of educating individual students.

For example, there is the case of a certain Ali Bey who was appointed as a captain but discharged because of his “lax and loose behavior.” He presented a petition to the Pasha requesting to be reappointed in the army and Mehmed Ali accepted it because “the man was the nephew of Ali Bey Maraşlı” who had been working in the War Department and “was a member of an old family.”

The picture of the logical, consistent and predictable law offered in the last chapter need not be challenged when we compare it to these cases of how the law was actually applied and punishment orders implemented. Like other spectacles that the Pasha was fond of, legal codes, courts martial and predictable punishments were all part of a new way of imposing order and discipline on society. He seems to have believed that it was in the military that these modern methods of order and discipline could best be tried out. However, being a practical man he also understood that given his limited resources these new techniques of ordering and organizing society should function only as models to be approached as closely as possible and which could, and indeed should, be violated if need be.

Builds on: "Time and financial constraints forced the Pasha to deviate from his own laws."

One of the problems that faced the Pasha in founding his army was how to create a well-trained and reliable officer corps, and it might be said that the problems he faced in creating such a group of men who would lead his soldiers in battle with efficiency and who, at the same time, would owe him respect and loyalty was as serious as the problems he faced in conscripting the peasants into the army. To a large extent, it could also be said that he succeeded in creating such a group of loyal and reliable officers. However, given the high priority he attached to their loyalty, they were often inefficient and many of them made bad officers. Moreover, given the ethnic origins of the majority of them, they were very different and distant from the men they were commanding.

XREF: Builds on loc 922 (patronage trumping regulations) and loc 118 (officer-soldier ethnic divides revealing elite-mass conflict). The privileged-loyalty dynamic explains the officers' distance from the rank and file. Builds on: "Patronage and family ties trumped military regulations in appointments."

The men who formed the senior echelons of the officer corps were composed of three main groups. At the heart of the officer corps and occupying the most senior military posts were the Pasha's blood relatives, his in-laws or his personal freed slaves. Even a cursory look at the composition of the top positions in the army at any moment in time will reveal this aspect of Mehmed Ali's army, namely that this was a "household army." During the Morean war, for example, the head of the Egyptian navy was Müharrem Bey, the Pasha's son-in-law. Later on Mehmed Said Pasha, his fourth son, was appointed as head of the navy. The army that invaded Syria was headed by his son, Ibrahim Pasha; the head of the infantry force was Ibrahim Pasha Yeğen, his nephew (who had earlier been governor of Yemen); the head of the cavalry forces was Abbas Pasha, his grandson. After capturing Syria, Mahmud Şerif Pasha, another nephew of the Pasha, was appointed as its governor. Fourteen months after the outbreak of the Syrian war Mehmed Ali decided to replace his Director of the War Department. The new nāīr was to be Ahmed Pasha Yeğen, who had been military commander of the Hijaz but whose most important credentials for the job was the fact that he was yet another nephew of the Pasha.

XREF: Extends the earlier claim at loc 922 that patronage and family ties trumped military regulations in appointments, now showing this is a deliberate 'household army' structure rather than a lapse. DEFINE: Introduces the concept of a 'household army' where senior military posts are reserved for the ruler's blood kin, in-laws, and freed slaves. Builds on: "Patronage and family ties trumped military regulations in appointments."

As peculiar as this aspect of the army may appear it allowed the Pasha to create a nucleus of officers which by the very nature of things were closely tied to him and stood to rise or fall with him. To cement this core of officers the Pasha appointed his own personal mamluks in senior positions in the army to form the second component of the officer corps. Those were the mamluks whom Süleyman Pasha was training in the Aswan school back in 1820–3. The problem with these mamluk officers was not lack of loyalty to the Pasha but insufficient training. Although a staff college was established as early as 1825 for these mamluk cadets to be trained and although it was reputed to be one of the best of the Pasha's educational institutions, it shared the same problems as the other schools, namely, students were recruited to it before they had finished their courses in the preparatory schools and were discharged from it before they had properly finished their study there.

Builds on: "Loyalty-prioritized officer selection produced inefficient Egyptian military command."

When the siege of Acre was prolonged and the city did not fall immediately as expected, Mehmed Ali wrote to Ibrahim suggesting that he should offer the besieged some money so as not to waste time and proceed to fight the Ottomans before they amassed their troops against him. Ibrahim answered by saying that he had yet to learn that cities were taken by money and that he intended to reduce it to a heap of rubble until it surrendered. The problem he was facing, he insisted, was not lack of money or soldiers, but of trained officers. This was the reason he gave for the prolonged siege of the city. Finally when the city did fall Ibrahim could not but admire the courage and fortitude of the soldiers attacking the city and said that he had yet to see other soldiers who could match them. He had no such complimentary words for his officers.

Builds on: "Mehmed Ali staffed his army's top posts with kin and slaves."

In addition to the students whom the Pasha had sent to Europe in the late twenties and who came back during the mid-thirties to be appointed to senior positions in the army and the bureaucracy, this group also included men from all corners of the Ottoman world, Albanians, Circassians, Georgians, Moreans, Anatolians and Istanbullites. These men came to Egypt with their families seeking employment and entered the Pasha's service both in his civil bureaucracy and his army and navy, gradually becoming members of the new elite centered around Mehmed Ali and his family. But again, as enthusiastic as they might have been in their new posts they were often at odds with their fellow officers with whom they had nothing in common except the desire and willingness to appease the Pasha and members of his family.

XREF: Connects to earlier claim at loc 106 that Egypt's elite belonged more to the Ottoman world than to Egypt. Builds on: "Ottoman-era Egypt was a vibrant society embedded in empire."

The officer corps of Mehmed Ali's army was thus characterized by an odd mixture of their members; and their failure to create a working esprit de corps was offset only by Ibrahim Pasha's strong and decisive leadership. Realizing that they were profit-seekers and unwieldy he was constantly complaining of their impetuous behavior to his father in Cairo. In one stormy letter to his father's chief secretary, Sami Bey, the baş-mu'avin, he described the officers of the 9th Cavalry Regiment as "Turks with mixed ancestries [who were] nothing but drunkards and rascals (çapkɩn)." He suggested getting rid of them all and replacing them with natives.

Later on, and during the course of the Syrian war, Ibrahim came to develop a very smooth working relationship with Süleyman Pasha. However, he was well aware that in general his officers were not as reliable as his soldiers and that his presence was crucial for the cohesiveness of the entire officer corps. He therefore dealt very firmly with any attempt to challenge his authority.

Builds on: "Inspected officer corps lacked cohesion despite Ibrahim's decisive leadership."

At the height of the Syrian war and after capturing Damascus, Ibrahim Pasha issued orders to Brigadier Ahmed Bey Istanbullu to march from Damascus to Tripoli and to stay there until further notice. Ahmed Bey, however, disobeyed orders and initiated a march towards Ibrahim Pasha's camp. When Ibrahim heard about this he ordered a court martial to be convened at once "because we do not have beys or princes [in the army], and whoever has his leg slipping (ayağı kayan) is immediately led to the court for his case to be reviewed there." Ibrahim wrote to Abbas Pasha asking him to convene a court martial immediately, and sure enough his nephew was soon presiding over one that was composed of six brigadiers, four colonels and a lieutenant-colonel. The military tribunal found Ahmed Bey guilty of violating military laws in times of war and sentenced him to five months' imprisonment in the Liman of Alexandria. Because of the army's need for such a senior officer and owing to the "delicacy of the situation," however, Ibrahim Pasha reduced the sentence to only thirty-one days' imprisonment. Furthermore, it soon became clear why the original harsh sentence was passed in the first place: Ahmed Bey had dared to send his daily reports directly to the War Department in Egypt rather than sending them to Ibrahim Pasha first, thus appearing to ignore and circumvent the authority of Ibrahim Pasha. It was this action rather than the alleged disobeying of orders that prompted Ibrahim Pasha to humiliate the officer since he "pretended that I am not Serasker [i.e. Commander-in-Chief]."

DEFINE: Ibrahim's 'slipping leg' metaphor frames procedural bypass through the chain of command as the gravest military offense.

As watchful as Ibrahim was of his commanders, he could not, of course, control the activities of every officer in the army. One problem was particularly difficult: nepotism in promotions. Given the very nature of the army, however, it is not surprising to find nepotism at work whether in cases of appointments, promotions, or exemptions from punishments. Bearing in mind the composition of the officer corps of the army and in particular appointments to the senior positions, nepotism appears to have been an essential element in the army and not a mere aberration to be corrected.

XREF: Builds on earlier claims about loyalty-prioritized officer selection (loc 924) and kin/slave staffing of top posts (loc 925), and patronage overriding regulations (loc 922). Builds on: "Loyalty-prioritized officer selection produced inefficient Egyptian military command."

Sustaining an army of around 130,000 men on a more or less constant war footing was no easy task, though. The problems encountered in keeping this army well fed, adequately clothed, and regularly paid were as significant as collecting the peasants from the villages and turning them into disciplined soldiers. This massive task demanded the build-up of state power to an extent unprecedented in Egyptian history and an encroachment by the state on people's lives in a way previously unparalleled. It entailed levying higher rates of taxation to enable the government to pay the soldiers and officers more or less punctually, requisitioning foodstuffs and sending them to the troops on the front and in the camps hundreds of miles away from home, manufacturing uniforms for the troops and finding men and women who were capable of working in the various factories that were geared to military production. In addition, it meant securing horses, mules, cows and oxen that were for the most part the motive force of these factories. Attention had also to be given to such logistical considerations as policing the passage of more and more troops to the battle areas (which by the mid-1830s had covered wide areas of the far-flung Ottoman Empire), establishing a proper communication network that would guarantee the delivery of these various requisitions to the troops, as well as sustaining an efficient postal system, which an army of that size necessitated. Of more importance, the modern army necessitated the founding of a modern medical system that would be capable of treating the wounded in battle, preventing diseases from spreading among the soldiers in the highly crowded camps and barracks, and finally of treating the officers and soldiers from the diseases that they were constantly afflicted by. In short, the importance of Mehmed Ali's army lies not only in its size or in the fact that it relied on what appears to have been universal conscription, but also in the economic–bureaucratic structure that supported and sustained it.

XREF: Builds on the earlier point at loc 894 about sustaining Egypt's standing army requiring unprecedented state expansion — this highlight gives the concrete logistical detail behind that claim. Builds on: "Napoleon's Grande Armée campaigns were heavily improvised and troubled."

On the face of it, Mehmed Ali seems to have seen the connection between his fighting force and a strong economic base. Both he and Ibrahim Pasha took care, for example, that their soldiers were regularly paid and well provided for and that they were not allowed to live off the land they marched through. Plunder and booty were strictly forbidden. Orders were issued attempting to send pay, food and other supplies to different army units, wherever they were. This is one of the most important features that distinguished Mehmed Ali's army from previous armies: whereas soldiers in previous armies were left to their own devices, Mehmed Ali's army depended on the modern state structure that had been founded primarily to support it. However, in spite of these orders, the pay of the soldiers was continually several months in arrears, and the soldiers were often complaining and causing disturbances and sometimes rising in open rebellion against their commanding officers. In one incident, troops sent to Cyprus to subdue a rebellion themselves revolted against Mehmed Ali and his government on the island; the Pasha wrote them an open order to be read aloud in front of them warning them of the consequences. He said, "I know that you still have not received a fifteen-month pay in arrears since you were in the Hijaz, and another fifteen-to-twenty-month pay since you were in the Sudan . . . You have to know, however, that you are not alone in this respect and that other troops in the Morea and in Crete also have their pay in arrears." He then warned them that if they did not end their rebellion, he would send troops by sea to deal with them and would write to the Sadrazam asking him to block their way to the north in case they fled. Even during the Syrian campaign, which was arguably the best organized campaign, Ibrahim was writing to his father urging him to send the pay of the troops regularly since the revenue he had been able to raise from Syria was not enough to meet the various expenses of the campaign and "the men are left penniless in these strange lands (şimdi asker bu gurbette parasɩz kaldɩ)." This was the case not only with soldiers' pay; army physicians and instructors were also complaining that their salaries were six months in arrears.

XREF: Builds on the earlier claim at loc 203 about armies' economic provisioning infrastructure explaining military success — this highlight shows the gap between provisioning ideals and actual payment failures. Pays off: "Armies' economic provisioning infrastructure explains their military success."

Sea captains ordered to deliver the army's supplies of food and military equipment from the Egyptian ports of Suez and Quṣair to the Arabian port of Jedda complained of low pay and refused to undertake the job. The amount of food sent to Arabia, when it did arrive, was discovered to be insufficient and it was suspected that the sea captains might have been stealing from it. Since on being loaded in Quṣair, however, it was not weighed, it was impossible to ask them to make good the difference.

However, in actual fact, these orders were very difficult to implement. The bread issued to the soldiers was often either rotten or improperly cooked, and Ibrahim Pasha had to order an investigation into why it was constantly inedible and black in color. Earlier in Arabia the situation was not much better. In response to repeated complaints that the warehouses in Jedda were empty, Mehmed Ali wrote to the governor of Mecca insisting that enough food supplies had already been sent and it could not be true as was claimed by his officials there that the supplies had already been used up. It was later discovered that these warehouses were unsuitable for storing food and that in consequence a lot of the peksimet sent had gone bad and "entered the state of that which has a name but no body (ismi var cismi yok)."

XREF: Connects to the earlier claim at loc 935 about provisioning innovations leaving soldiers unpaid and loc 936 about theft via unweighed cargo — together they build a picture of endemic corruption and infrastructure failure in military supply. Builds on: "Unweighed cargo enabled theft beyond official detection."

In a certain incident 10,000 pairs of shoes were made in Egypt and promptly sent to the army in Syria only for it to be discovered that they were all so small as to fit only children's feet!

XREF: Connects to earlier claims about provisioning failures (loc 935, 937) and the army's economic infrastructure. Builds on: "Military provisioning failures undermined even empowered armies' effectiveness."

A missing order would cause unnecessary delays, but the officials in charge would still hesitate to act without documents lest they be accused of corruption. Efficient as the postal system appears to have been, keeping the Pasha in touch with his troops in Syria or the Hijaz hundreds of miles away, different government departments in Cairo would sometimes find difficulty in communicating with each other, even though they might have been located across the same street in Cairo; and "missing letters" were always referred to for not fulfilling orders.

XREF: Builds on loc 916 about postal modernization depending on scarce literate officials — this highlight shows the concrete failure that scarcity produced.

The process of borrowing goes even further: Frederick, in devising his military system, was influenced (ultimately) by Maurice of Nassau, Prince of Orange (1567–1625), who perfected army drill to create the modern Leviathan that fascinated him. Yet Maurice of Nassau looked to ancient Rome for his model, and Rome of course looked to Greece for inspiration. Here, however, the borrowing ends since the Greeks, as is well known, were inspired by the gods.

XREF: This genealogy echoes the book's earlier theme (loc 425, 428) that Mehmed Ali's own military borrowing was mediated through Ottoman adoption, showing how institutional imitation recurs across eras.

For example, after the battle of Horns on 9 July 1832 against the Ottoman army a large number of Ottoman soldiers were captured by the Egyptians. Also captured and taken prisoner was the chief scribe (muhasebetci) of the “Istanbullite regular army” who was ordered to compile a list of the soldiers and officers captured, all 1,791 of them. When the report was handed in to his captors Mehmed Munib, the Aide-de-Camp of Ibrahim Pasha (his Divan Efendisi), could not accept it because, he said, it was wrongly titled. At the top of the list the Ottoman official had written Asakir-i Mansuremiz Alaylar: “The Regiments of our Victorious Soldiers.” This was supposed to allude to the official title of the new nizami army that Sultan Mahmud II had founded in 1826, Muallem Asakir-i Mansure-i Muhammadiye, “The Trained Victorious Soldiers of Muhammad.” Nevertheless, Mehmed Munib would not allow the word Mansure, Victorious, to be used, and ordered the Ottoman scribe to use the word Makhure, Crushed, instead!

XREF: Connects to earlier highlights about propaganda, spectacle, and the staging of power (loc 410, 912) — the renaming is a micro-act of domination over the defeated. Builds on: "Egyptian governors' propaganda tours augmented the army's deterrence value."

What is interesting in this case is that it shows that in spite of the explicit regulations of the Pasha that the registers of the bureaucracy be kept clean, with no scribbling or scrawling, the chief scribe of the army saw clearly that he was facing a situation that dictated his violation of this order. What he was faced with was a scribe of a rival army which was defeated, and crushed, but still claimed to be victorious. Mehmed Munib’s witnessing of the act of recording the list of POWs, what for him was tantamount to an act of official surrender, had to be unambiguous, clear in its recognition of the defeat that Ibrahim had inflicted on the Ottomans, even if this implied referring to the Ottoman army by using a title that was different from its official one.

XREF: Builds on loc 958 about Victorious naming being revoked; this shows how the scribe deliberately crafted writing to enforce a political reality over official military title. DEFINE: Shows that bureaucratic record-keeping was a site of political contestation where cleanliness rules gave way to political necessity. Builds on: "Victorious naming could be revoked and replaced by crushed."

This was a special elite force that was handpicked by Ibrahim Pasha himself; Vekayi-i Mɩsɩriyye, issue no. 172, on 13 S 1246 24 July 1831. It was disbanded by Abbas Pasha in 1849; Dhawat 5/61, on 23 S 1265 19 January 1849. It seems it was named after the French National Guard.

Contemporary observers also commented that "the officers compose by far the worst class of the Egyptian army"; Scott, Rambles in Egypt, II, p. 227.

XREF: Connects to earlier claims about officer corps incohesion (loc 928) and loyalty-prioritized selection producing inefficient command (loc 924). Builds on: "Inspected officer corps lacked cohesion despite Ibrahim's decisive leadership."

Sham 3/98, on 6 Ş 1247/10 January 1832. It is obvious from the names of the soldiers that they were all Egyptian Arabs, while the officer (Badr Ağa) was most likely a Turk.

A colonel's costume was reported to cost 60,000 piastres; see David Nicolle, "Nizam – Egypt's army in the nineteenth century," Pt. I, The Army Quarterly and Defence Journal 108 (1978), p. 70.

SEED: The staggering uniform cost relative to soldiers' pay arrears highlights the regime's spending priorities on officers' display while rank-and-file went unpaid. Builds on: "Mehmed Ali's army provisioning innovations still left soldiers unpaid months in arrears."

Compared to scabies, dealing with syphilis presented much more formidable problems. Detecting and treating syphilis necessitated a much closer scrutiny of soldiers' bodies. The first article of Clot Bey's Risāla, written specifically for the treatment of syphilis and scabies, went as follows. On receiving this letter you must conduct an examination of all the men whose health you are required to look after, officers, NCOs and soldiers. Those afflicted with one of those two diseases [i.e. scabies and syphilis] have to be set aside, and particular care has to be given to those afflicted with syphilis. You have to check their genitalia and their mouths. This examination is to be conducted once every week.

XREF: Builds on the theme of medical inspection of soldiers' bodies from loc 727 and 731 where disease inspections became the focus of disciplinary power. Builds on: "Barracks sanitation regulations evolved into targeted disease inspections of soldiers."

To surmount this problem, a number of translators were assigned to each lecturer and asked to translate the lecture while it was being delivered. It was a most curious situation; a hundred Egyptian students from al-Azhar who knew only Arabic and who had never received any training but in Arabic grammar, Koranic Exegesis, Fikh, etc. gathered together in order to be trained in medical and scientific subjects of which they had not the slightest idea by a number of European teachers who did not know the language of their students and who themselves were not homogenous [four being French, three Italians, a Spaniard], a Piedmontese and . . . a Bavarian.

QUESTION: This early simultaneous-translation arrangement predates modern conference interpreting history, which usually credits Nuremberg (1940s). Worth chasing whether this is an underacknowledged precursor.

The resistance of the soldiers to these regular medical check-ups was mirrored in the larger society by the civilians' resistance to vaccination. What appears to have been a policy which intended their own benefit and well-being, vaccination was seen by peasants and city folk alike as yet another way of marking their children for conscription. The authorities appear to have made no effort to overcome their expected resistance by enlisting the support of the village shaykhs or the shaykhs of the quarters, for example. The villagers did everything possible to resist vaccinating their sons; they fled from the doctors, hid their sons, attacked the barber-vaccinators, bribed the local officials to leave their children unmarked, and forged vaccination certificates.

XREF: Mirrors the peasants' resistance to conscription (loc 471-472, 593) — vaccination was read through the same lens of state coercion and marking. QUESTION: Why did authorities decline to enlist shaykhs' support to overcome vaccination resistance, when shaykhs proved essential elsewhere? Builds on: "Peasants rebelled openly rather than submit to forced conscription."

In February 1832 Islam Ağa, the adjutant-major of the 13th Infantry Regiment, died in the army hospital in Acre. On his death bed, he asked a friend of his, Hüseyin Ağa, the lieutenant-colonel of the 8th Infantry Regiment, to take charge of his funeral. He specifically requested him to sell his belongings, buy him a shroud and have a shaykh “recite the Koran on his soul.” Taking this to be his friend’s will, Hüseyin Ağa sold the property of his deceased friend so that he could meet the expenses of the funeral. Before the funeral had been conducted, however, the military headquarters in Syria intervened asking Mehmed Bey, the colonel of the 13th Infantry Regiment, to confiscate the deceased man’s property and sell it and hand in the money to the divan, since all his belongings, it was claimed, were miri money, i.e. public property. When he was informed about this, Hüseyin Ağa presented a petition to Ibrahim Pasha citing in it the reasons for his actions and requesting permission to fulfill his friend’s will. Ibrahim Pasha referred the petition to Ibrahim Yeğen. Ibrahim Yeğen “gave no answer.”

XREF: Connects to earlier claims about state appropriation, conscription, and the army's extractive relationship with soldiers (e.g. loc 938, 935 about unpaid soldiers).

Seven months later the colonel of the 8th Regiment died of hepatitis also in the hospital in Acre. Five days before he died Ala Eddin Ağa gave his eighteen-year-old servant five kises (2,500 piasters) against a stamped certificate and in the presence of various witnesses. When informed about this the divan doubted the authenticity of the certificate and laid claim on the money saying that the property of dead soldiers and officers should revert to the army. Seeing that the boy had a stamped certificate, however, the divan decided to deal with the issue through the local religious judge (qāḍī) who said that according to the sharī‘a it was illegal to make a will that exceeded one-third of the value of the deceased’s property. The case was more complicated than that, moreover, since it was also discovered that besides cash, Ala Eddin Ağa had also left the boy his horse. The divan, however, decided to confiscate two-thirds of the cash and to take the horse to deliver it to the cavalry, which was in short supply of horses. To add to the young lad’s grievance he himself was to be conscripted into the army. He then presented a petition to Ibrahim Pasha saying in it that he was a freed slave of Ala Eddin Ağa and would like to go to Cairo to serve his master’s young children. Again, “he was silenced and was given no answer” (sükut olunup cevap verilmedi).

DEFINE: Illustrates the one-third rule in Islamic inheritance law through a concrete estate dispute.

So far every chapter of this book has opened with a scene, an anecdote or a spectacle that set the tone for the chapter to follow. This chapter, however, opens with an absence of a scene, a scene that one would expect, but is found missing. Given the two cases of death mentioned above and given that the last chapter opened with a scene of battle, this chapter should have opened with a scene of a funeral. However, in all the thousands of documents about Mehmed Ali’s army and his various campaigns there is not a single description of a funeral either of an officer or of a soldier. As illustrated by the example of the two petitions mentioned above, highlighting the absence of the funeral, the hundreds and thousands of men who died in Mehmed Ali’s various campaigns received no dignified burial and the only concern of the authorities was that prompt notification be given about dates of death so as to cut salaries that were sometimes delivered to the men’s families back in Egypt. As far as the authorities were concerned a dead man, officer or soldier, was only a name to be crossed off the army registers and payrolls.

XREF: Connects to the chapter on how authorities treated soldiers as payroll entries (loc 628 on roll-call surveillance and loc 711 on numbered identity), showing death as the final bureaucratic erasure.

Given the traditional role that bedouins played in Mehmed Ali’s army, however, it seems equally plausible to argue that they were placed there to catch any deserters from the Egyptian side. When the actual battle started a large number of soldiers felt trapped not only between their ever watchful sentries behind them and the enemy ahead, but also between the strong urge to flee and desert the army altogether, on the one hand, an urge that was never really effectively quenched, and, on the other hand, the obligation to obey orders and “engage with the enemy” in a courageous, “manly” way. And unless one uncritically believes accounts of nationalist historians arguing that Mehmed Ali’s troops were willing to give up their lives for the sake of “Egypt,” these men had still not lost their instinct of self-preservation that kept them human in spite of years of training and indoctrination. “Placed in intolerable and unprecedented circumstances of fear and stress, deprived of their sense of control, and expected to react with . . . unnatural ‘courage’” a lot of these men could not continue fighting, broke down, and reacted in a manner that recalls the behavior of many British soldiers in the Great War of 1914–18.

SEED: This challenges nation-state origin myths by showing soldiers preserved self-preservation instinct over nationalist loyalty. Pays off: "Nationalist lens distorts historians' translation of Ottoman-era documents."

Be that as it may, as far as both wars were experienced by the soldiers who did the fighting and not by the commanders who drove them to their deaths there are significant similarities between them that make comparison worthwhile. In both wars there was an underlying current of discontent with the war, of "pacifism," to use a modern term, a feeling that the war was futile, purposeless and unnecessary. In spite of the subsequent attempts to write such "pacifist" tendencies out of the official narratives of both wars, the record shows that in addition to their reactions to the horror, anguish, fear and panic of the actual combat situation the men often broke down and refused to continue with the slaughter. During the Great War such cases were referred to as "shell shock"; by 1916 such cases had accounted for 40 percent of the total casualties in the combat zones. W. H. R. Rivers, the noted anthropologist and clinical psychologist who treated numerous cases of "shell shock" during the war, concluded that the "quantity of neurotic symptoms correlated not with the intensity of battle, the length of an individual's service, or his emotional disposition, but with the degree of his immobility." In the Syrian war it was during the prolonged siege of Acre (early December 1831 to late May of the following year) that thousands of Egyptian troops were feeling vulnerable, sitting immobile as they did in the sappers' trenches that they were digging to approach the walls of the fortress and falling prey to the shells that were being fired from the defiant city. It was then that the men started showing signs that could only be read as "shell shock" and resembled the experiences of the British soldiers eighty years later.

XREF: W.H.R. Rivers' finding parallels modern shell shock research and Foucault-type analysis of immobile troops, echoed by the siege at Acre.

In one incident during that siege a soldier was killed by the shells fired from the fortress. On seeing his body his comrades panicked, left the battle scene together, and headed back to the relative security of the trenches. Their captain also deserted his position and went all the way back to the army camp to inform his commander of the incident. Four days later these men were court martialled. The captain was told that his reasons for deserting his position were not accepted since it was ridiculous to go and inform the commander of every soldier who died. The soldiers were also told that their actions were unmanly and cowardly, and violated the law which said that "if a certain soldier dies and in order to prevent fear spreading his body should be promptly hidden from his colleagues." In another incident during the same siege, a soldier threw himself on the ground in an attempt to escape the shrapnel of the cannon balls fired from the castle. Unfortunately for the poor soldier, Ibrahim Pasha was passing by and happened to witness his behavior which he considered unbecoming to a soldier. He summoned the soldier in question and ordered all the men in the vicinity ("one or two companies") to spit on his face because he dared to show his fear.

XREF: Connects to the highlight at loc 677 where women's self-maiming resistance met savage public executions, and loc 674-675 on corporal punishment as sovereign authority. Builds on: "Public punishment reasserted the sovereign's momentarily injured authority."

Home-sickness [al-ishtiyāq ila al-waṭan] is a disease that often afflicts the new soldiers after leaving their homes, families and things familiar to them. This leads them to depression, melancholy, soreness, tiredness and sometimes to death. Therefore, they have to be kept occupied as much as possible and to be promised their imminent return home . . . As much as possible soldiers have to be kept in a happy, content state and their officers have to be ordered to be gentle with them . . . and to make them believe that the dangers they are about to encounter are not grave.

DEFINE: Explicitly defines al-ishtiyāq ila al-waṭan, home-sickness, as a formal military concern with clinical symptoms. Builds on: "Immobility, not combat intensity, triggered soldiers' neurotic breakdowns."

In that sense Mehmed Ali's soldiers, like all soldiers facing any battle, were caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. Before the tense few hours of battle they were confronted with the prospect of meeting the enemy with all the feelings of fear and horror that fighting entailed. Behind them were the memories of home, of fields left unattended, of deserted families, of wives and loved ones abandoned, left to their luck. Leaving the battle scene to return home was impossible since guards and sentries were always looking over them. When the battle started the tension heightened: to do nothing and to stay still or to fall back to the relative security of the reserve lines was always risky, since this carried with it the certainty of being court martialled. Being trapped in this manner, the soldiers had nothing better to do than obey the orders issued to them in the form of command signals and shouts from their officers. An example from the battle of Konia might make this clear. During a minor counter-attack by the Ottomans the Egyptians lost all order and the whole 1st Cavalry Brigade was thrown into confusion.

Builds on: "Commanders manipulated morale to prevent soldiers' fatal home-sickness."

If ever the Egyptian army could be said to have been superior to its Ottoman adversary, it was in situations like this when it was not the courage, honor or high morale that came to the rescue, but the constant drilling and repetitious training that induced the soldiers to recognize in the midst of the hubbub and clamor of the battle the familiar sight of a banner or the decipherable sound of a trumpet that signified something meaningful to them. These signals, banners and command shouts seemed to give the illusion of order in such tense moments. During the taxing hours of battle soldiers had no choice but to obey commands, not only because not obeying them brought with it the likelihood of punishment but also because disregarding them seemed to bring death closer still. The soldier stood to benefit personally from obeying orders during the decisive hours of battle since these orders gave at least a semblance of order and organization.

On roaming the camp of the 8th Infantry Regiment a certain captain found an outsider in the quarters of his company. He asked him where he was from, and the stranger answered that he was a fellah from Egypt who had been visiting a relative of his, a sergeant-major in the same company, and had been staying with him for fifteen days. This was at the height of the siege of Acre when the entire army was supposed to be on high alert and when civilians, Egyptians or not, were forcibly refused entry to the camp unless they carried a stamped certificate stating explicitly the reason for and nature of their visit. Alarmed, the captain summoned one of his lieutenants to order the sergeant-major in question to ask his friend to leave the camp, since, as he said, "there is no business for strangers here (barrani adamin işi yoktur)." When later it was discovered that the fellah was still on the premises, the captain summoned the fellah again and asked him why he had still not left. The fellah answered that he had nothing to do in the camp but had come to see his relative and now that this had been done he would be moving out. The captain then threatened him that if he did not leave at once, he would arrest him and have him beaten. When the sergeant-major heard this he went to the captain and complained of the way his friend was being treated. He explained that he and the fellah were from the same village and added that he would not order his friend out unless there were a ship available and ready to take him back to Egypt. The captain then arrested the fellah and beat him. In addition, he also arrested the sergeant-major and had him imprisoned. While in prison, and from behind bars, the sergeant-major shouted at his captain that it was only because the captain had recently been moved from another company that they could not get along together and that if they had been serving together in the same company, all this could have been avoided, and "I would have been accepted by you (senin yaninda makbul olurdum)."

First, it undermines the impression one gets from reading the military laws which organized the daily lives of the soldiers in the barracks. In spite of the sentry officers, the soldiers guarding the gates and fences of the camps, the bedouin forces roaming the vicinities of the camps, and the stipulation that all visitors be forbidden from entering such exclusive areas, this fellah not only succeeded in penetrating these supposedly insurmountable barriers but continued to live undetected with his friend for fifteen days. The presumably impermeable boundaries that were erected by the various laws, decrees and manuals were in fact constantly negotiated and crossed by the soldiers during their daily lives in the camps, a fact poignantly illustrated by the ability of the soldier to shout back at his officer from behind bars.

Builds on: "Camp security rules often broke down in actual practice."

Second, it shows that in spite of years of training, of being subjected to a strict system of surveillance and control and in spite of continuous drills and exercises, the sergeant-major in question did not show signs that all this had had any significant effect on the way he was supposed to think and act – i.e. as a soldier and not as a fellah/civilian. Having come across a fellow villager, it was natural for him to extend him an invitation to stay with him on the camp and he could not see why his commanding officers were so harsh and inhospitable to his visitor. When his friend was arrested he could not see why he was being reprimanded and punished. His body might seem to have been closely controlled, but his heart and mind appeared to still belong to a different world, that of civilian life back in the nostalgically remote lands of Egypt.

XREF: Connects to loc 664's claim that surveillance aimed to bind soldiers' minds, not just bodies — here we see that project failing. XREF: Contrasts with loc 656's claim that military routine deliberately ruptured soldiers from civilian lives. Pays off: "Surveillance aimed to bind soldiers' minds, not just bodies."

Third, it throws doubt on the nature of the soldier–officer relationship, a relationship that is defined in the training manuals and in the different military laws as a hierarchical and clearly defined one. When he was caught and put in jail the only reason he could give for his captain's "odd" behavior was that they had not known each other personally; if they had, this whole issue could have been avoided. Again years of training and indoctrination seem not to have had any significant impact on the manner in which the soldiers thought about and felt towards their officers.

XREF: Builds on the earlier claim that surveillance and training failed to rewire soldiers' civilian identity (loc 1110), and that drill imparts signals sustaining soldiers in battle chaos (loc 1105). Builds on: "Surveillance and training failed to rewire soldiers' civilian identity."

Besides feeding, clothing and training the troops, the authorities paid considerable attention to the state of physical health and general hygiene of the conscripts. Mehmed Ali appears to have realized that to have a healthy body of troops care had to be given to the general health situation of the population at large. His concern with medical matters was not limited to the troops but included "students in state schools, workers in state industries, and urban and rural communities related to any government activity." The Pasha is often described as opening hospitals, sending students to Europe to study medicine, ordering the vaccination of the population against smallpox, and instituting quarantines around major ports and cities in an attempt to control the spread of contagious diseases, mainly cholera and the plague. His measures to design a modern military and civilian public health program is seen as one of his greatest achievements that laid the basis for the creation of a modern medical profession in Egypt and which "helped get rid of the clouds of ignorance that have been hovering over the country for centuries."

QUESTION: How did vaccination and quarantine actually reach rural populations given resistance noted elsewhere in this book?

However, it was the narrower concern for the health and hygiene of the soldiers that attracted most of the Pasha's attention and that of his chief medical advisors. The concentration of large numbers of men in the military schools, training camps and, of course, in the field camps along the different warring fronts, brought with it the possibility of widespread disease which could have posed serious threats to a country whose manpower was already drained by the Pasha's insatiable needs. As in his attempt to control smallpox, the plague and cholera, the Pasha learned his lesson the hard way. In the early months of the disastrous Sudan campaign the army that he sent down there lost 600 men who fell dead of various diseases. Owing to the lack of doctors, medicine and qualified medical personnel the number of dead in September 1821 rose to 600 in addition to 2,000 men who had fallen prey to various diseases. The following month the number of dead rose even further to 1,500: this in an army of three thousand troops.

XREF: Connects to the earlier claim about Sudanese conscript mortality compelling reliance on native Egyptian recruits (loc 444). Builds on: "Sudanese conscript mortality compelled reliance on native Egyptian recruits."

It was decided that each infantry regiment was to have one European doctor supervising three Egyptian ones. The cavalry regiments were to have one European doctor in addition to two Egyptian ones. Those Egyptian doctors were to be given the rank of second lieutenant. All doctors were to be under the supervision of their respective colonels and brigadiers without these latter, however, interfering in their professional work. The regulations proceeded to give such details as the position of the tents of the various doctors in respect to those of senior officers in the regiments and the brigades.

DEFINE: Reveals differentiated medical resourcing between cavalry and infantry units.

While the Pasha and the chief physician of his army, Clot Bey, resorted to the logical choice of recruiting graduates of al-Azhar since this formed the only pool of young literate men in the country, these men certainly had no knowledge of French or any other foreign language. At the same time, most of the doctors who were employed in teaching in the school had no knowledge of Arabic. To surmount this problem, a number of translators were assigned to each lecturer and asked to translate the lecture while it was being delivered.

XREF: Builds on the earlier highlight about simultaneous translation enabling early Egyptian medical education (loc 1086), here describing the actual mechanics of how that translation worked. Pays off: "Syphilis detection demanded weekly intrusive examinations of soldiers' bodies."

It was a most curious situation; a hundred Egyptian students from al-Azhar who knew only Arabic and who had never received any training but in Arabic grammar, Koranic Exegesis, Fikh, etc. gathered together in order to be trained in medical and scientific subjects of which they had not the slightest idea by a number of European teachers who did not know the language of their students and who themselves were not homogenous [four being French, three Italians, a Spaniard], a Piedmontese and . . . a Bavarian.

XREF: Builds on the bilingual medical education theme at loc 1086 and 1124. Builds on: "Syphilis detection demanded weekly intrusive examinations of soldiers' bodies."

This weird system invited all kinds of problems. On one occasion, for example, a certain translator, Shaykh Harrāwī, objected to having to translate some of Clot Bey's lectures because he disagreed with the doctor's opinions. Clot Bey wrote to Mehmed Ali, who in turn wrote to the Deputy Director of the War Department telling him that he was surprised that the Health Council had not reprimanded the Shaykh strongly enough. He then said that the Shaykh should be written a strong letter telling him to mind his own business and not to interfere in Clot Bey's lectures "since he is a translator no more."

XREF: Connects to the earlier claims about simultaneous translation in medical education (loc 1086, 1124), showing how the translation system's political constraints operated. Builds on: "Mediocre translation made Egyptian medical education functionally bilingual."

Faced with a near epidemic of scabies and syphilis, and having unqualified doctors to deal with them, Clot Bey wrote a special treatise about the subject. Translated into Arabic and printed in the Army Press, the treatise took the form of a personal letter from the chief physician of the army to each regimental doctor. This treatise is significant because it shows the alarming spread of these diseases, something that necessitated the intervention of the chief physician of the army himself. … Given the low level of competence of the regimental doctors, Clot Bey had to write the book as a manual describing in very simplistic language how to conduct the check-ups so that any doctor with the most basic knowledge of medicine would be able to follow it using a minimum degree of discretion.

XREF: Connects to loc 1125 where European teachers instructed students with no shared language, and loc 1126 about translators as neutral instruments — both documenting the broader medical competence gap. Builds on: "European medical teachers instructed Arab students with no shared language."

Although the low level of competence of the new doctors might have been a serious problem, the main difficulty in dealing with scabies and syphilis lay in the appalling condition of the army hospitals in Syria that militated against a healthy, sanitary environment, an obvious essential condition for preventing the spread of disease. It was one thing for Clot Bey or the medical authorities in Cairo to stipulate that soldiers were to be segregated and regularly examined, it was another thing for this segregation and these examinations to be carried out as planned.

Builds on: "Egyptian context explains the gap between plan and execution."

In that respect the Chief Physician of the army sometimes had the backing of the Pasha; more often, however, the Pasha in his typical thrifty manner would require him to make do with what was available. For example, when it was brought to his attention that students in the School of Medicine were issued with small uniforms that did not fit them, he characteristically answered that “each person has to extend his legs as much as could be covered by his trousers.”

Since the quality of bandages is considered to be one of the key issues in surgery, we have conducted an examination of these bandages used in the hospital and found that they are very bad indeed. They were coarse and dirty, contaminating the wounds that they are supposed to dress . . . [Then he gives his explanation for this situation:] An order has been issued from the War Department to the Director of the Central Depot of Medicine to hand in used and semi-used [nisf isti‘māl] cloth to the Chief Pharmacist accompanied by a stamped receipt. The Chief Pharmacist is then supposed to hand the cloth to the Chief Surgeon also accompanied by a receipt. The Chief Surgeon, in turn, is then to hand in the cloth to the Director of the Hospital who would then distribute it among the patients to make the bandages themselves. He is then supposed to collect them from the patients. In this manner the bandages would have already changed hands four times. This is against the Hospital regulations that should not be violated.

DEFINE: The highlight documents how a convoluted four-step bureaucratic transfer process degraded medical supplies, showing how administrative friction directly produced dirty bandages. Builds on: "Interdepartmental postal communication broke down despite cross-street proximity."

When in 1836, for example, an examination was conducted on the conditions of the Tura and Qaṣr al-‘Ainī hospitals in Cairo, it was discovered, among other things, that both hospitals were issuing less meat to their patients than was stipulated by the regulations. When the report was sent to Mehmed Ali he forwarded it to the War Department to take the necessary steps to alleviate the problems. The Deputy Director of the War Department returned the report to the Pasha, however, claiming that this was not the War Department’s business but that of the Health Council. The Pasha refused to accept this pretext, and insisted that the War Department deal with the complaints.

XREF: Connects to the ongoing theme of bureaucratic red tape and administrative breakdown documented across the Egyptian army's institutions (e.g., interdepartmental postal breakdown at loc 943, contaminated bandages at loc 1133). Builds on: "Interdepartmental postal communication broke down despite cross-street proximity."

In a revealing letter, Munib Efendi, Ibrahim Pasha’s Aide-de-Camp, wrote to Ahmed Bey, the Governor of Damascus, complaining about the problems of securing a sufficient number of these servants (hizmetkar). He said that although the army hospitals in Syria were arranged according to European regulations (Avrupa kanunu üzere) which stipulated appointing one servant per twelve patients (and one per six patients if they were segregated), he admitted that these regulations could not be carried out. The main reason was lack of funds. He elaborated by saying that there was no problem in appointing barbers for the patients, since these could always be secured from the soldiers of the regiment at large. The problem, he explained, was securing servants to cook and clean the hospitals. These had to be hired from the local population, something that obviously cost money. To cut down on expenses, he suggested the appointment of some of the “semi-disabled” (yanm sakatlar) as servants. Since these might not be able to walk, he soon realized, animals would have to be hired to transport them to their jobs, something that would entail more, and not less, expense. After waffling on in this manner, Munib Efendi was at a loss over what to do.

XREF: Builds on the recurring finding (loc 911, 923, 1133) that financial and practical constraints routinely forced the Pasha's army to deviate from its own regulations. Builds on: "Time and financial constraints forced the Pasha to deviate from his own laws."

The hospitals in Syria were also suffering from being overcrowded with patients and understaffed by doctors. An investigation was once conducted into the performance of the hospital in Acre. Munib Efendi conducted the investigation himself and cleared the hospital’s director of responsibility. The problem, his report said, was that the hospital was overcrowded and the doctors could not cope with the number of patients they were receiving every day. At that particular time it had over 300 inmates and was expecting forty-five more patients that day. This large number made it impossible to order the patients to have their regular baths, something that the patients afflicted with scabies had to do as part of their treatment. The other problem, Munib Efendi added in his report, was that the doctors had no control over the patients, who were constantly going out to the markets and no one could stop them.

XREF: Connects to loc 1130 on hospital conditions in Syria thwarting segregation orders, and loc 1139 on budgetary shortfalls disabling military regulations. Builds on: "Hospital conditions in Syria thwarted orders for soldier segregation."

When contrasted with Clot Bey’s regulations, these accounts of the way the regimental field hospitals in Syria functioned show the enormous gap separating model from reality that so characterizes the entire reign of Mehmed Ali, and not only his health policy. As seen above, the regimental hospitals were underfunded, overcrowded, lacked qualified doctors capable of dealing with the health problems of an army at war and, above all, suffered from all the problems that were characteristic of other establishments of the Pasha, namely corruption and inefficiency.

Builds on: "Egyptian context explains the gap between plan and execution."

As far as the spread of scabies was concerned, one reason seems to have been the overcrowded nature of the barracks and camps. More importantly, the logistical and bureaucratic problems reviewed in the last chapter meant that, as was seen above, the soldiers were rarely issued new uniforms and that they had to stay in their old, often dirty ones for a long time. When Hassan Efendi, the adjutant-major of the 8th Infantry Regiment, received orders to investigate the appearance and uniforms of his soldiers he found most of them in direct violation of the regulations. In a report he sent to his major he said that their uniforms have worn out and “hardly anything is left of the shoes on their feet and a lot of them walk bare-foot in the markets.”

XREF: Connects to the pattern of provisioning failures and red tape affecting soldier health seen throughout the book, e.g., contaminated bandages (loc 1133) and budgetary shortfalls disabling regulations (loc 1139). Builds on: "Budgetary shortfalls disabled even the most detailed military regulations."

Concerning the soldiers in Ḥaifa . . . We found their bodies, their weapons, and their belongings dirty and unclean (wiskha lam naīfa). They were disorderly and doing whatever pleased them (mashiyīn min gheir tartīb 'ala keifhum).

Builds on: "Egyptian soldiers sought foreign asylum and attacked consulates in Syria."

During these medical inspections the soldiers found their bodies minutely examined and closely inspected as reflected in the following typical report about one such inspection conducted by the doctor of the Guardia Regiment and ordered by Ibrahim Pasha. … At eight o'clock on Thursday 3rd of Şaban 1247 [7 January 1832] on investigating the soldiers of the eight companies of the 1st Battalion of the Guardia Regiment, no disease was discovered among the musicians of the companies (musikicilerde hasta yoktur). Their tents were also found clean and warm. However, the sergeant-major of the 5th Company had hurt the thumb of his left hand while pulling a cannon.

Despite the benefits of routine medical examinations, there does not seem to have been any effort to convince the men of them or to enlist their support. Soldiers resented being so minutely examined by the doctors and often lied about their physical condition in order to avoid being sent to the field hospitals. For example, a general medical examination was once conducted on the soldiers of the 12th Infantry Regiment in Syria. The European doctors found that twelve men were infected with syphilis and 210 with scabies. None of them was sent to the hospital and they were still living side by side with the regiment at large. When the Egyptian doctors were asked why the sick had not been interned in the hospital as the regulations stipulated, they answered that whenever they asked them, the soldiers denied being afflicted with any diseases.

Builds on: "Medical inspections recorded soldiers' bodies and conditions with exacting detail."

At the same time soldiers, and occasionally officers, often feigned sickness to avoid being sent to the front and to have a pretext for staying in the relative security of the field hospital. Cadets in military school sometimes acted similarly; on being sent to the hospital it would soon be noticed that they had not lost their appetite and that "each one of them was eating as much as four." Officers who were discovered to have been cheating in this manner were discharged from service altogether, sent to the Liman of Alexandria, and were stripped of their medals and uniforms.

XREF: Relates to earlier claims about women's self-maiming and villagers' desertion, showing resistance to army service took many covert forms beyond desertion. SEED: An article angle: how the medical field hospital became a site of resistance — soldiers weaponizing illness claims against the state's own disciplinary apparatus. Builds on: "Conscripts universally resisted through desertion and self-inflicted wounds."

Given this humiliating treatment it is not surprising to read about soldiers in that particular ward resisting treatment98 and sometimes physically fighting the authorities. In one incident the patients went on the rampage in the hospital taking the glass out of the window frames and urinating on the floor and in the drinking water containers. Since most of them were young and "able-bodied" and since they "were not afflicted with diseases that would prevent their doctors from treating them harshly," it was suggested that they be punished with "severe bodily penalties . . . because reprimanding them has not worked so far."

XREF: Connects to earlier claims about soldiers' resistance to conscription and coercion (loc 593, loc 459, loc 471), extending that resistance into the medical sphere. Builds on: "Soldiers' denial defeated medical efforts to quarantine the diseased."

The reaction to the imposition of quarantines was no different. Seeing this as another abrupt intervention in their lives, soldiers attempted to evade the quarantines by all means. After spending nearly two years in Syria and being excited about going back home, soldiers disembarking at Damietta were asked to stay on board their ships for the duration of the quarantine. When they staged a minor mutiny in which the captain of the ship as well as the sentries were beaten by the soldiers, a battalion had to be sent from Cairo to assist the quarantine officials to restore order in the port.

XREF: Builds on earlier highlights about soldiers' resistance to state control (desertion, self-maiming, mutiny), showing quarantine as another site of the same coercion-resistance dynamic. Builds on: "Soldiers' denial defeated medical efforts to quarantine the diseased."

When the authorities insisted on forbidding the wives from accompanying their husbands, the men grumbled strongly “and in order to counteract the feeling of despondency as far as possible, the wives, concubines, and parents of the conscripts have been allowed to accompany them.”

XREF: Builds on earlier claims that soldiers' families followed them into camp shanty-towns (loc 657) and that Egyptian soldiers resisted conscription (loc 593). Builds on: "Soldiers' families followed them into camp shanty-towns"

By giving way to the soldiers’ needs on that front Mehmed Ali proved to be more flexible and pragmatic than the contemporary British naval commanders who were aiming at a moral standard “altogether too high for the people with whom it dealt . . . [especially by insisting on] the whole illogical system of indiscriminate pressing with its corollary of not allowing the men shore-leave when in port.” Allowing women to join their husbands in Syria, however, created hygiene problems which certainly contributed to the spread of syphilis and other venereal diseases among the soldiery and which the authorities now found difficult to address.

XREF: Connects to earlier highlights about camp shantytowns (loc 657) and health concerns driving their dismantling, including the syphilis inspection regimes at loc 1086. Builds on: "Soldiers' families followed them into camp shanty-towns"

In the second section of his Risāla Clot Bey, in a characteristically simplistic and didactic manner, set out a method that he thought would be effective in controlling the spread of syphilis through prevention rather than cure. It had to do primarily with the health condition of the women’s lodgings and their bodies. He said that the wives of the soldiers of each regiment were to be divided into four sections. Each of these sections was to be composed of the wives of the soldiers of each battalion within the regiment. They had to be set aside and examined by the wives of the doctors in charge of the men of the corresponding battalion.

Builds on: "Syphilis detection demanded weekly intrusive examinations of soldiers' bodies."

There is some evidence to suggest that prostitution in big cities in Egypt and Syria was on the rise during the first half of the nineteenth century. This occurred not so much because of any sudden appearance of vice, as represented in a person such as al-‘almeh Kuchuk Hanim116 on her divan, or because of a sudden increase in the number of khawals117 dancing in the streets in their female dresses. Nor is it, as Clot Bey opined, because of the high rise in the rate of divorce or the “voluptuous temperament of Egyptian women.” Rather, it was caused by the unprecedented social mobility, with thousands of men moving around from camp to camp and from city to city and also with thousands of women left behind by their husbands, fathers and brothers. “Numbers of young wives thus abandoned are compelled by starvation, or to prevent their children from perishing to join the almé [i.e. prostitution], all whose profligate habits they must soon acquire.”

In May 1834, however, the Department of Civil Affairs (Divan-ɩ Hidiv) debated the matter and decided to abolish the tax and ban the whole trade from the city of Cairo. The shaykhs of the quarters were ordered to compile lists of the brothels in the quarters and of the prostitutes working there. The brothels were to be shut down and the prostitutes warned that on being caught practicing their trade they would be given fifty lashes of the whip, to be doubled if caught a second time.

QUESTION: Did the ban and whipping actually suppress prostitution in Cairo, or did it, like so many other decrees, fail in practice? This seems to be another gap between regulation and reality. Builds on: "Social dislocation and starvation drove Middle Eastern women into prostitution."

That prostitutes were considered a menace more to discipline and health than to morals and good manners is also clear from the fact that they were prohibited from practicing their trade only in big cities and around the camps. When Flaubert visited Egypt in 1849–50 he knew that no prostitutes could easily be found in Cairo, that they had moved on to Upper Egypt and that “good brothels no longer exist[ed] in Cairo.” This ban on prostitution In Cairo was largely imposed for fear of its effect on soldiers’ health and their discipline.

XREF: Connects to loc 1167 (the 1834 ban) and loc 1165 (women pushed into prostitution by dislocation), deepening why the ban existed — army hygiene and control, not morality. Builds on: "Egyptian state banned prostitution in Cairo in 1834."

These simple acts of negotiating and crossing boundaries, even though they were not as dramatic as desertion (which will be dealt with in the next chapter), were still quite alarming, for they undermined the whole logic of the modern army, a logic that saw the best way of disciplining and training an army in isolating it from the wider society and in drawing sharp distinctions between civilian and military lives.

XREF: Builds on the earlier contrast between coercive regulation and actual practice (e.g., loc 1108 'Camp security rules often broke down in actual practice' and loc 1109 'Ordinary soldiers perpetually crossed supposedly impermeable camp boundaries'). Pays off: "Ordinary soldiers perpetually crossed supposedly impermeable camp boundaries."

The real problem underlying the authorities’ attempt to control the soldiers’ encounters with prostitutes lay in the fact that, in spite of all the regulations reviewed in this and previous chapters aiming at forbidding the soldiers from mingling with the local population and at creating formidable boundaries around the barracks and training camps, the men continued to filter through to the surrounding areas. Although the military and health authorities wanted to have tight control over the soldiers’ bodies, a control that is graphically represented by the policy of segregation and internment in the camps, the soldiers were always crossing the supposedly insurmountable boundaries enclosing their camps. These simple acts of negotiating and crossing boundaries, even though they were not as dramatic as desertion (which will be dealt with in the next chapter), were still quite alarming, for they undermined the whole logic of the modern army, a logic that saw the best way of disciplining and training an army in isolating it from the wider society and in drawing sharp distinctions between civilian and military lives.

XREF: Builds directly on earlier highlights about soldiers crossing supposedly permeable boundaries (loc 1108-1109) and the incompleteness of disciplinary power. Builds on: "Ordinary soldiers perpetually crossed supposedly impermeable camp boundaries."

After the fall of Acre, the soldiers pillaged the whole city and sold their booty in the local market. Their activities could not be controlled and Munib Efendi had to write in his report that “their officers are either unable to control them or are turning a blind eye to what is happening. This is certainly against the regulations and might turn the locals against us.” When Ibrahim Pasha was informed about how unruly the city had become, and that “the soldiers are behaving like senior officers,” he wrote a stern letter to the colonel in charge of the city warning him of the consequences if he did not restore discipline.

SEED: The contrast between military triumph and subsequent uncontrollable looting offers a vivid narrative angle on how conquests breed occupation fragility. Builds on: "Egyptian military law lacked provisions governing sodomy in 1824."

Unlike the barren deserts of Arabia or the Sudan, Syria was a rich province dotted with big towns and cities offering all kinds of attractions for the soldiers to leave the camps and have a taste of the civilian life they must have missed. And unlike Morea or the Mediterranean islands that Mehmed Ali sent troops to, Syria was also an Arabic-speaking province, a fact that allowed the soldiers to mix with the local population for all the reasons mentioned above.

Builds on: "Boundary-crossing by soldiers undermined the modern army's isolationist logic."

It is here that we come to focusing on problems that characterized Mehmed Ali's military authorities and indeed his entire reign: impressive blueprints and programs that gave stunning spectacles of order, but which floundered at the first attempt at implementation. Besides the usual problems that were mentioned in the previous chapters that related to lack of funds, cumbersome bureaucratic regulations, unrealistic demands by the Pasha, and internal divisions among the elite itself (represented by the problems that Clot Bey had with the War Department), this chapter touched on the issue of resistance by the soldiers to the authorities' regulations and concluded with the apparently trivial, but crucial problems that the authorities had with guards and sentries. Passing laws that forbade prostitutes from ever entering or approaching military camps, issuing regulations that prevented soldiers from having access to the outside world, printing tezkeres that soldiers had to have on them if they left military precincts – all were impressive innovations that characterized Mehmed Ali's regime. Impressive as they might be, however, they did not guarantee that the Pasha's will went fulfilled.

XREF: This directly parallels the earlier claim about how official regulations reveal little about how armies actually operated (loc 909), and the gap between model regulations and real practice throughout Mehmed Ali's reign (loc 1141). Pays off: "Model regulations far exceeded real practice throughout Mehmed Ali's reign."

The governor told the muleteer that he was too poor to keep two women and that he had to divorce one of them. After they left, the governor sent a special messenger to one of the women telling her that if her husband divorced her, he would be willing to marry her himself. When the muleteer got to know about this, he took it to be the governor's wish and divorced his wife in court after writing a testimony (hüccet) saying that he did so voluntarily. When Munib Efendi heard about the case, however, he reprimanded the governor politely and told him that since he was a high-ranking Egyptian official (cenab-ɩ şerifiniz devlet-i Mɩsɩriyyenin ümerasindan madud olub), and although he was not, strictly speaking, a military man, he should have sought permission from the military authorities to get married. In response, the governor said, "I have been married a number of times while I was in Egypt, and never before was I asked for a permit. It did not occur to me that I needed one now." The fact that he took no heed of the authorities' opinion on what he regarded to be a private matter and, moreover, the apparent abuse of his position, is an example not only of how difficult it was for the authorities to control the activities of its senior officials, but more generally, of the discrepancy between al-qānūn (the law, the regulations) and ḥukm al-wāqi' (reality) that is characteristic of Mehmed Ali's rule.

XREF: Connects to loc 115's claim that discrepancies in law implementation stem from distinct sources, and loc 1179's claim about the gap between design and implementation. This anecdote illustrates one specific source: powerful officials defying authorities. Builds on: "Discrepancies in law implementation stem from several distinct sources."

That a woman could be found in an army hospital, that a soldier fell in love with her and decided to marry her and that his colonel could not stop him from doing so attest to the fact that the authorities had as much difficulty in controlling "all the activities and stillnesses of the soldiers" as they had with keeping an eye on the behavior of the senior officials.

As tightly as the authorities wanted to control the activities of the soldiers, reality spoke differently. The training manual might have portrayed the soldier as a robot with every gesture, every glance meticulously controlled and vigilantly manipulated. Judging from the accounts of the battles, however, it appears that soldiers were full of the all-too-human emotions of love, hate, jealousy, pride and fear of death. And reading the accounts of their daily lives on the camps, it does appear that the authorities failed in capturing their bodies, let alone in imprinting on their minds that this was indeed their army.

Builds on: "Officials' control over common soldiers remained as limited as over senior officers."

This and the previous chapters have shown the authorities attempting to capture the fellahin's bodies and minds, and the fellahin, on the other hand, resisting these manipulative attempts of the state. Yet, was there no positive incentive that induced the fellahin to join the army out of their own accord, or, having joined it, to think about it in some positive way? The following chapter deals with this question, namely, the possibility that soldiers might have thought of it as a national army fighting for their own country.

QUESTION: The chapter poses a genuinely open question: whether conscripts found any positive incentive in army service or conceived of it as fighting for their own country. This is the pivot from coercion to possible voluntary loyalty. Builds on: "Nationalist historians overstate soldiers' willingness to die for "Egypt.""

See for example the case of the widow who was asked to return thirty-five months' pay that she received as her dead husband's salary on the grounds that her husband had died since then but the army authorities were not informed in time to stop delivering to her her husband's pay; Awamir lil-Jihadiyya 1/219, on 24 S 1254/20 May 1838.

Fussell goes on to say of Haig that “he was the perfect commander for an enterprise committed to endless abortive assaulting. Indeed one powerful legacy of Haig's performance is the conviction among the imaginative and intelligent today of the unredeemable defectiveness of all civil and military leaders. Haig could be said to have established the paradigm.” Although modern Egyptian and British leaders seem to follow the paradigm, Ibrahim, unlike Haig, could not be said to have established it.

The health conditions in Acre after it had fallen were appalling; 1, 525 men died, most of them of malaria and hepatitis: Sham 18/184, on 25 N 1248/16 February 1833.

XREF: Parallels earlier claim at loc 1116 that disease killed Sudan campaign soldiers faster than enemy combat — disease mortality recurs as this army's chief killer across campaigns. Builds on: "Disease killed Sudan campaign soldiers faster than enemy combat."

2 The health conditions in Acre after it had fallen were appalling; 1, 525 men died, most of them of malaria and hepatitis: Sham 18/184, on 25 N 1248/16 February 1833.

XREF: Builds on the many disease-and-soldier claims earlier, especially that disease killed Sudan campaign soldiers faster than combat. Builds on: "Bureaucratic error persisted in payroll after a soldier's death."

See the case of the eighty-five doctors who accepted bribes from the locals to forge vaccination certificates for them: S/3/122/2, pp. 61–3, letters 11–96, all dated 26 Ca 1263/13 May 1847.

XREF: Plays against loc 1086's claim that villagers resisted vaccination as hidden conscription marking — here doctors themselves corrupted the process, another layer of corruption.

The request of the soldiers to have their families brought was relayed to the Pasha in S/1/48/4/250 on 2 Ca 1249/17 September 1833, and his answer is in S/1/48/4/255 on 15 Ca 1249/30 September 1833.

QUESTION: Was the Pasha's answer to family relocation requests generally favorable, or a discreet refusal?

Ibrahim said that he was going to announce this good news to the soldiers thinking that this showed how merciful and benevolent the Pasha was. On second thoughts, however, his father said that this way they would lose a lot of men and suggested that this new system be applied only to the new conscripts and that those already in service be treated as if they had spent five years already.

The scale and regularity of desertion was the most striking testimony to the fellahin’s willingness to resist a regime they found oppressive, intolerant and inhuman. There is something almost splendid about defying Mehmed Ali and his authorities in that way and at that level. Desertion and the authorities’ frustration with it show how much Mehmed Ali’s policies found no echo in the fellahin’s minds and souls.

One of the main arguments that nationalist historians have put forward to prove that the army was indeed a national army in spite of the Turkish ethnicity of its founder is that of how different his son was in this respect. Ibrahim, it is alleged, was closer to his Egyptian soldiers and never identified himself as an Ottoman. Be that as it may, what this chapter has argued is that Ibrahim had no doubt in his mind regarding the nature of the wars that his army was fighting. As far as he was concerned these were wars that he waged in the name of his father and for the sake of his family.

XREF: Builds on earlier claims about Ibrahim's pragmatic loyalties (loc 917: preferred speed over French standards; loc 926: prized loyalty over competence) and counters the nationalist historians' framing at loc 1095. Pays off: "Nationalist historians overstate soldiers' willingness to die for "Egypt.""

This was possible not only because the soldiers believed this to be the case, but more importantly, because their officers, since their Great Emperor’s time, had been convinced strongly enough of this themselves and were then able to pass on this feeling to their subordinates. In that respect Mehmed Ali’s army was different. Two crucial features characterized his officers. Like Napoleon’s, they were loyal to their master, owing him allegiance and devotion, and strove to appease him and his family. However, unlike the Emperor’s officers, they were not from or of the country they were defending. Being themselves newcomers to Egypt, the officers in Mehmed Ali’s army had no roots in the country that they were supposedly fighting for and the ethnic and linguistic differences that separated them from their soldiers made any attempt to convince the soldiers of any nationalistic argument nearly impossible.

XREF: Builds on the repeated theme that Egyptian soldiers were ethnic Arabs while officers were Turks (loc 1043), and that nation-state formation required monopolized violence and administrative reach (loc 119). Builds on: "Egyptian soldiers were ethnic Arabs while officers were Turks."

The Pasha clearly had in mind the idea of creating a conscript army in which the soldiers would be firmly dominated by their officers. He once told a distinguished French visitor, “I have not done in Egypt except what the British are doing in India; they have an army composed of Indians and ruled by British officers, and I have an army composed of Arabs ruled by Turkish officers … He added, however, that he was determined to forbid these Turkish-speaking immigrants from legally acquiring land in Egypt and “from becoming proprietors and creating for themselves a personal leverage over the population.”

XREF: Connects the Pasha's army-building to British colonial practice in India, a parallel Mehmed Ali himself drew explicitly. SEED: An essay could explore how colonial military models migrated across imperial contexts — Egypt borrowing from British India to control Arabs.

It has often been argued that it was during the first half of the nineteenth century and mostly by being allowed to carry weapons and to defend their own country that the fellahin of Egypt came to think of themselves as Egyptians first and foremost. Given the fact that most banners of Mehmed Ali’s battalions had his name on them, would it be more accurate to argue that this was the Pasha’s personal army fighting what were in essence his own wars and not those of “Egypt,” and that the men who fought in them conceived of it as such, i.e. as a personal not a national army?

QUESTION: The author challenges this argument, asking whether the army was a personal force serving Mehmed Ali rather than a national one fostering identity. XREF: Connects to loc 93 (army discipline manufactured rather than revealed national identity) and loc 1095 (nationalist historians overstate soldiers' willingness to die for Egypt). Builds on: "Ibrahim reconsidered universal conscription to preserve experienced soldiers."

The 'Urābī Revolution of 1881–2, in addition to being a revolution by various sectors of the urban and rural population against European dual control, was also a revolt of these estranged Arabic-speaking fellah officers against their Turkish-speaking superiors. This domination was represented most clearly by the system, initially put down fifty years earlier by Mehmed Ali and Ibrahim Pasha, whereby only Turkish-speaking officers were allowed to be promoted to high ranks in the army as well as in the civilian bureaucracy.

More seriously, many fellahin went as far as maiming themselves in the hope that they might be declared medically unfit for service in the army. Initially, the most common way of maiming was to remove the front teeth in order to be deemed incapable of loading the muskets. However, when Mehmed Ali was informed that a lot of men in Upper Egypt had resorted to this habit, he said that since the training manuals did not specify which teeth should be used in loading the musket, these men could use other teeth and should therefore be conscripted. Other ways of maiming were more dangerous and resulted in serious bodily harm. One such method resorted to by the fellahin was to blind themselves by putting rat poison in their eyes.

XREF: Builds on the earlier claims that Egyptian peasants resisted conscription (loc 41, 92) and that conscripts resisted through self-inflicted wounds (loc 593). This highlight documents the specific extreme forms of that self-maiming. Builds on: "Conscripts universally resisted through desertion and self-inflicted wounds."

Six years into the campaign, however, Mehmed Ali received a report which was most alarming regarding deserters. It said that as many as 60,000 men had gone missing from the army in addition to 20,000 from the navy! Bearing in mind that the army could not have been larger than 130,000, this means that for every two conscripts, one soldier managed to desert.

Builds on: "Conscripts universally resisted through desertion and self-inflicted wounds."

When the Serasker, Ibrahim Pasha, saw that the signs of defeat were spreading among his troops he shouted at them saying, “I am not one of those who turn their backs on fighting when the going gets tough. Look at me and see my forehead stained with blood and sand.” He then pulled his sword from its sheath, dismounted from his horse, and marched forward through the water until he was submerged up to his neck . . . On seeing this, the soldiers were filled with faith and courage and soon followed their commander depending on no one but God who said in His Book, “It was incumbent upon Us to assist the believers.”

XREF: Connects to earlier claims about Ibrahim's motivational speeches and battlefield conduct (loc 647, 646) — here the same leadership principle appears in the Syrian campaign, showing the pattern recurs. FICTION: The image of a commander striding into the sea to his neck while invoking scripture offers a vivid scene for historical fiction. Builds on: "Ibrahim's motivational letter urged soldiers to obey without thinking."

As the example mentioned above shows, the language used both to incite the soldiers to fight and to describe their performance afterwards was often a religious language. Referring to the Egyptian fighters as the “believers,” to the enemy as the “infidels,” quoting from the Quran, and citing particular episodes from Islamic history, all show that defending the faith, rather than the patrie, was, in this case, the prime concern of officers and soldiers alike. In the Morean war, when the enemy was composed of the Christian Greek subjects who had rebelled against the authority of the Ottoman Sultan, this could very well have been the case. However, the situation was essentially different during the Syrian campaign, when the enemy was nothing other than the army of the Ottoman Sultan, the Defender of the Faith and Protector of the two Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina. Using religious language to incite the soldiers to fight the Asakir-i Mansure-yi Muhammadiyye (The Victorious Soldiers of Muhammad), as the new Ottoman army was called after 1826, would not have been appropriate. How then did the men think when they were fighting not the Greek rebels but the Ottoman Sultan?

QUESTION: How did officers frame the war against the Ottoman Sultan — Islam's Defender of the Faith — without religious language, and what secular framing replaced it?

Ibrahim, however, does not appear to have had any illusions as to the dynastic nature of the struggle between his family and the Ottomans. After each military victory he accomplished in the Syrian campaign he wrote to the various notables ordering them to pray for the health and happiness of "our father, the vali of Egypt." When he thought that the Ottomans were spreading rumors about him and his father in their Vekayi, he ordered a scribe to write down his version of events and to send it to Acre to be translated there into French so as to dispatch it to Europe. On receiving these orders, Vehid Efendi, Ibrahim Yeğen's scribe, suggested that it might not be the right moment to do so considering that fighting was at its peak; Ibrahim answered angrily, "These matters will be written in history books, and a hundred years from now it will be said that Mehmed Ali did this and that. Is this not so, you animal?"

XREF: Connects to loc 171 about King Fouad curating archives to craft dynastic narrative — both rulers manipulated historical records for dynastic legitimacy. SEED: Could explore how military victors cultivate historians versus soldiers as strategy to secure legacy. Builds on: "King Fouad curated archival documents to craft a flattering dynastic narrative."

The characterization of an army as a national institution, however, cannot be done solely by analyzing the sentiments and personality of its commander-in-chief, as crucial as these surely are. No matter how "liberal" or "enlightened" one wishes to judge Ibrahim, the performance of the army was much more influenced by the composition of the officer corps and by the problematic relationship that existed between officers and their men. Naturally, any army is bound to have serious problems between the officers issuing the commands and the men doing all the dirty work, problems that emanate from the social and economic backgrounds of both groups. Yet, in addition to these problems, Mehmed Ali's army also had an important point of tension that had its origins in the ethnic and linguistic differences between officers and soldiers.

XREF: Builds on loc 1184 and loc 1306 claims about officer-soldier ethnic divides and the ethnic Turkish officer dominance fueling Arab fellahin revolt. Builds on: "Ibrahim reconsidered universal conscription to preserve experienced soldiers."

The Pasha clearly had in mind the idea of creating a conscript army in which the soldiers would be firmly dominated by their officers. He once told a distinguished French visitor, "I have not done in Egypt except what the British are doing in India; they have an army composed of Indians and ruled by British officers, and I have an army composed of Arabs ruled by Turkish officers . . . The Turk makes a better officer, since he knows that he is entitled to rule, while the Arab feels that the Turk is better than him in that respect." He added, however, that he was determined to forbid these Turkish-speaking immigrants from legally acquiring land in Egypt and "from becoming proprietors and creating for themselves a personal leverage over the population."

XREF: Directly mirrors the earlier highlight at loc 1306 already claiming this same proposition. Builds on: "Ibrahim reconsidered universal conscription to preserve experienced soldiers."

As a rule Egyptians, referred to as evlad-ɩ Arab, were not allowed to be promoted beyond the rank of yüzabşi (captain) and very few of them were even promoted to that rank in the first place. As for the ranks of mülazim evvel and mülazim sani (lieutenant and second-lieutenant, respectively), half of them had to be "Turks" and the other half "Arabs." Before signing the orders promoting men to these ranks, Ibrahim Pasha had to inquire if the nominees were from "those who can be promoted to these ranks, since it is against the rules to have more than four Arab lieutenants per battalion." Nominations for promotions to upper ranks, on the other hand, usually stated the place of birth of the candidate, to make it clear that he was a "Turk." Otherwise, it would be stated clearly that the candidate was a mamluk. These guidelines were strictly followed and Mehmed Ali insisted that his son not promote "Arabs" to senior ranks even if he was in short supply of "Turkish" officers. During the Morean campaign Ibrahim was urging his father to send him Turkish officers (evlad-ɩ Türk) since he was forbidden from replacing dead or wounded officers by "Egyptian" ones that he had with him in Morea.

XREF: Builds on the repeated theme that Egyptian soldiers were Arabs while officers were Turks (loc 1043), and ties to ethnic officer-fellahin class conflict (loc 118, 1306). Pays off: "Egyptian soldiers were ethnic Arabs while officers were Turks."

Being a Turk, that is, speaking Turkish and having one's origins in Anatolia, Istanbul, Albania, or other parts of the Ottoman world, was therefore enough for a man to be considered a candidate for a senior position in Mehmed Ali's army31 even if he had originally been caught as a POW! After the defeat of the Ottoman army in the various battles in Syria, a considerable number of officers and soldiers were taken prisoner. They were given three choices: either to agree to go back to their countries (but via Alexandria so as not to join the Ottoman army again), to join the Egyptian army by enlisting at the HQ in Acre, or to be sent to join one of the schools in Cairo. Eventually an entire regiment was formed from prisoners captured after the Ottoman army was defeated. More significantly, a number of the men taken prisoner were appointed as officers in the Egyptian army. Aref Bey, one of the officers in the Ottoman army, for example, was taken prisoner at the battle of Konia and was appointed as colonel to a newly formed regiment, created out of Turkish prisoners captured in the same battle. Other prisoners were appointed as lieutenants and captains over the soldiers who had captured them: the main criterion qualifying them for these positions was their Turkish identity. This caused much resentment among the soldiers who complained, “Why do we sacrifice our lives and put ourselves in danger to capture these men only to find them appointed as our officers ruling over us?” Neither Mehmed Ali nor Ibrahim found any problems with this practice, although Ibrahim, being closer to the soldiers and more sensitive to their sentiments, might have been more apprehensive than his father about it. As far as both men were concerned, these were evlad-ɩ Türk who were more entitled and capable than “Arabs” to be appointed as officers.

QUESTION: How did soldiers' resentment about prisoner-officers shape internal discipline or future revolt? Builds on: "Ethnic quotas barred Egyptians from senior military ranks."

A certain captain, Dervis Ağa by name, once asked a soldier (his servant, hizmetkar, as he called him) to fetch him a water bottle. When the soldier brought him an empty one, he shouted at him, cursing his faith, and beating him on the back of his neck. When he was court-martialled he said defiantly, “If you want to punish me for insulting a fifteen-piaster fellah, then go ahead. As far as I am concerned, the fellah is not worth more than this.” When a certain regiment was dispatched to Damietta and paraded through the city, a Turkish official there publicly cursed the days in which the “blind fellahin” had been made soldiers. He added that they would never be as good as Turkish ones. Some officers cheated their soldiers, selling them goods at ten times their price on the market “until they were left penniless.” The habit of insulting and abusing soldiers was so widespread that Ibrahim had to write and distribute a general pamphlet to all the regiments in Syria reminding the officers that it was due primarily to the “bravery and zeal” of the soldiers that the army was victorious in its numerous battles. He ordered them not to abuse or insult their soldiers and to send them to a court martial (divan) to be tried there according to the laws, rather than take the law into their own hands. He warned the officers that whoever was found violating these orders would be expelled from service altogether.

XREF: Builds on earlier claims about ethnic Turkish officer dominance (loc 1043, 1306, 1328) by demonstrating how this ethnic hierarchy manifested in daily contempt and abuse.

Ibrahim responded by saying that, in effect, he could not be more strict for he was faced with the possibility of officers defecting and with the likelihood of a massive mutiny by the soldiers. The matter, it seemed, concerned harsh penalties that were needed to maintain discipline and his belief that they might be counter-productive.

These severe punishments are not unknown to me and I saw them in Morea. [Back then] in one incident [one senior officer] whipped more than sixty men in one day with his own hands including an officer with the rank of adjutant-major. In another incident Süleyman Pasha [Sèves] lowered one officer from the rank of adjutant-major all the way to second lieutenant. Time will only tell what the effect of this policy will be on the defection of officers [to the Ottomans]. Of course, injustices and misapplication of the law are inevitable. Be that as it may, however, everyone knows that those who commit injustice are officers and those on whom injustice is committed are soldiers . . . If the men lose their patience, things can go completely out of our hands, and then neither Your Highness, nor your humble slave, author of these lines, will be able to do anything about it. If these were some fellahin from the villages, we would have expected them to bear up with this system. Since they are [not peasants, however, but] soldiers, we have to think of the dangers if they lose their patience.

In that sense Ibrahim was faced with the usual problems confronting a commander of any of the European armies that preceded the rise of the modern nation-state: a mercenary officer corps that was on the “job market” seeking employment in the expanding armies of this or that prince or king and a disgruntled peasantry which had been conscripted by force but which had not yet been fooled into thinking that it was their own interest that they were fighting for. Force and lucrative pay were the only way to keep such armies intact. It follows that too little pay might push the officers to defect and seek another career opportunity elsewhere, and too much force in imposing discipline might incite the soldiers to open rebellion.

Ibrahim or his father might have reprimanded this or that officer for mistreating the soldiers; ultimately, however, the very fabric of the army depended on the need to control the fellah conscripts by appointing ethnically different officers to command them. Whatever his true sentiments might have been regarding the qualities of the “Arabs” vs. “Turks” under his rule, Mehmed Ali knew that it was only by appointing Turkish-speaking officers that it was possible to prevent the fellah conscripts from turning against him and his ruling family. The Pasha knew too well that if “Arabs” were allowed to assume leadership positions, whether in the army or the civilian administration, they would challenge the very basis of his power, viz. the Turkish–mamluk coalition that he had so laboriously formed.

Builds on: "Ethnic quotas barred Egyptians from senior military ranks."

The officers, rather than thinking of themselves as serving in a national army, were behaving as mercenary officers who moved from one patron to the other depending on who paid better. … It was not completely unusual, for example, to find two brothers fighting in the two opposing armies. Having previously served in the Sultan's army, or at least being familiar with the world that it represented, the Ottoman world, the officers in the Pasha's army were closer to the officers and soldiers of the army they were fighting against than to the soldiers of the army they were fighting in, soldiers who spoke a different language, came from a completely different social and economic background and believed in a different set of cultural and moral values.

Pays off: "Ottoman-era Egypt was a vibrant society embedded in empire."

None of the battles that these men were about to fight in were ever portrayed to them as national battles, i.e. battles in which the word "Egypt" as meaning a nation-state was referred to. Instead, to incite them to fight or to encourage them to excel in training, reference was made either to religion or to their superior training and better organization. … During the Syrian campaign the enemy was no other than the Sultan of the Muslims, and the Protector of the Two Holy Shrines himself. In that case, as was shown during the storming of the fortress of Acre, it was the superiority of their training and their organization that the soldiers were referred to in order to encourage them before battle started.

Builds on: "Religious language motivated Egyptian soldiers against Greek rebels but not the sultan."

Not only were they badly treated by their officers, but they also soon realized that even in law they were discriminated against. Ibrahim might have been against the degrading treatment of the soldiers by their officers, but he was even stricter about the principle that no officers were to be punished by being beaten in front of the men: only soldiers were to be punished that way. The soldiers were also much less regularly paid than their officers. Moreover, the difference in pay between their salaries and that of their senior officers was phenomenal: the ratio of the soldier's salary to that of a colonel in the Sultan's army was 1:60; in the Egyptian army it was over 1:500.

XREF: Builds on earlier highlights about officer-soldier class conflict (loc 118) and ethnic divides (loc 1328-1330). QUESTION: The 1:500 ratio versus 1:60 is striking — what drove such an extreme divergence? Builds on: "Armies mirror their society's class structure internally."

After being treated for their wounds, the sakat (lit., the fallen), as the disabled were referred to, were checked by the hakimbaşɩ, the chief doctor of the hospital. Those who were found not to be completely disabled and who were still capable of bearing arms would be designated as yarɩm sakat, i.e. half-disabled, and would be retained in the army. When enough of those half-disabled soldiers had been so designated they would be grouped together to form a battalion and a sakat officer would be appointed as their commander. … When the army had no need for them but they could still be used for other jobs, they were not released or sent back to their villages, but were formed in companies, had a "half-disabled" officer appointed as a commander and assigned to perform various tasks. These might be to assist in guard duties, in repairing and fortifying buildings, or as servants in military hospitals.

The soldiers fighting in Mehmed Ali’s army deserted when they were given the slightest opportunity. They fled from the camps71 and during marches. They escaped from military hospitals, from military ships, from military schools, and from military establishments. Not only soldiers, but NCOs also fled. More significantly the guards themselves fled78 and the elite regiments, the Guardia Regiments, that were created to catch deserters, among other things, were rampant with desertion themselves.

Builds on: "Ibrahim reconsidered universal conscription to preserve experienced soldiers."

Desertion was not a matter of individual isolated cases that the authorities succeeded in limiting and controlling; it was a phenomenon that continued to irk the authorities because of its frequency and magnitude, as attested to by the fact that the regiments’ scribes were given pre-printed tables with “noksan,” i.e. missing, as one of their standard headings. Seeing these reports, both Mehmed Ali and his son were alarmed at the scale of the problem. Ibrahim rejected the officers’ claim that it was the increased duties of the soldiers that prompted them to desert. He said that this was a mere pretext and that desertion was more due to the laxity and carelessness of the officers.

DEFINE: The term 'noksan' (missing) became a standard scribal heading, showing the word itself codified the desertion problem into bureaucratic routine. Builds on: "Desertion infected every level of the Egyptian army."

Having succeeded in escaping from their units, where did these men go? One obvious place was to go back to their villages. After the registers had been checked and the villages of these deserters identified, however, an order would be issued to the governor of the province in which these villages lay. The order would give the names and descriptions of the deserters; the shaykh of the village would be fined fifty piasters for every deserter found in his village as well as receiving 100 stripes of the whip. Spies (baṣṣāṣṣīn) were also sent roaming the countryside searching for deserters.

XREF: Builds on earlier claim loc 661/628 that tribal concealment of conscripts triggered harsh Egyptian punishment, and loc 479 on village shaykhs' essential compliance role. Builds on: "Bedouin tribal guards proved unreliable and prone to desertion."

More seriously, many fellahin went as far as maiming themselves in the hope that they might be declared medically unfit for service in the army. Initially, the most common way of maiming was to remove the front teeth in order to be deemed incapable of loading the muskets. However, when Mehmed Ali was informed that a lot of men in Upper Egypt had resorted to this habit, he said that since the training manuals did not specify which teeth should be used in loading the musket, these men could use other teeth and should therefore be conscripted.

XREF: Builds directly on the earlier claim about Egyptian peasants maiming themselves to evade conscription, now showing Mehmed Ali's strategic response to the practice. Builds on: "Ibrahim reconsidered universal conscription to preserve experienced soldiers."

A clear message was being delivered to the Pasha and his military authorities: the fellahin resented his army and were going to extreme lengths to resist serving in it. In response, the Pasha was sending back an equally clear message to anyone who might be thinking of mutilating himself to evade conscription: he would still be taken for the service – if not for the army, then for any of the Pasha’s projects. In short, it proved extremely difficult to evade the army for it seems that there was a stubborn determination on the part of the Pasha that the mutilated would not escape conscription. When all methods failed in preventing the fellahin from stopping the terrible practice of mutilation, the authorities went ahead with drafting the maimed all the same. On visiting Asyout in 1834 St. John described a scene where “there was a whole regiment which had been composed of mutilated conscripts, every one of whom had either lost an eye, a finger, or the front teeth.”

XREF: Directly extends the earlier claims about fellahin self-maiming (loc 1306, loc 1352) by showing the state's counter-move in the evasion arms race. Builds on: "Fellahin maiming widened into an escalating conscription evasion arms race."

Ultimately, Egyptians, seeing that life had become so unbearable under the new “enlightened” regime of Mehmed Ali because of corvée, taxation, monopolies, imprisonment and, above all, conscription, decided that even if they could bear these atrocities themselves, there was no reason why they should see their own children subjected to the same fate. Thus a new method of resistance developed which reflected the Egyptians’ utter despair: they simply refused to marry and have children. In 1828 Mehmed Ali wrote to the Director of his War Department, Mahmud Bey, telling him that a lot of fellahin were abstaining from marriage in order to avoid seeing their children being subjected to these various government demands, e.g. taxation and imprisonment. He therefore ordered him to suggest means to issue orders to the shaykhs that would meet government demands and at the same time pacify the fellahin and discourage them from this habit, since “the prosperity of the country depends on increasing its population.”

XREF: Builds on the pattern of escalating conscription-evasion tactics (self-maiming, flight, resistance) — this is a final, extreme resort. Connects to earlier highlights at loc 471, 472, 590, 1352 about peasant resistance. Builds on: "Fellahin maiming widened into an escalating conscription evasion arms race."

It is natural for any sane person to resist conscription, since conscription and captivity are [practically] the same. No conscript would ever have the hope of saying “I will be conscripted for a fixed period, then I will be discharged and live the remaining years of my life [outside the army].” Men have the right to think likewise since we do not discharge men unless they receive serious wounds in their hands, legs, eyes or heads; that is, they are not discharged unless they are good neither for the army nor [any other] service. This is why we face resistance in conscripting them.

Builds on: "Conscripts universally resisted through desertion and self-inflicted wounds."

Given this mentality it was natural for the male population of Egypt to hate the army into which they were dragged by Mehmed Ali’s military machine and to seize every opportunity to evade it whenever and wherever they could. Nothing can be further from the truth than al-Rāf‘ī’s allegation that the fellahin eventually saw that “military life was more comfortable than their village life [which, in fact, is not saying much], and even became proud of it.” In all the numerous cases about conscripting the male population of Egypt into Mehmed Ali’s army there was only a single instance of a man voluntarily requesting to join the army.

XREF: Pays off the ongoing theme of coerced conscription and fellahin resistance seen throughout the earlier highlights, most directly loc 92 'Egyptians fiercely resisted forced military service under the Pasha.' Pays off: "Egyptians fiercely resisted forced military service under the Pasha."

Yet is it plausible to argue that the spectacular victories which that army secured were accomplished by peasants who were dragged in it completely against their wishes? Lacking the positive incentive of fighting in defense of the fatherland, and at the same time being prevented from looting and pillaging the lands they conquered, how then can one account for the successive victories that these soldiers were able to secure? In an attempt to answer this important question the following section compares the Pasha’s army with that of Napoelon, an army on whose example it was partly modeled and one which shows that it is possible for a disgruntled peasantry which had been pressed into military service to produce successive victories for its commanders. This is followed by a comparison with the Sultan’s own army – which was Mehmed Ali’s most formidable adversary – a comparison that is intended to show how Ibrahim’s victories were not that hard to come by in the first place.

QUESTION: The puzzle of how unwilling conscripts win wars is posed here; the following comparisons with Napoleon's army and the Sultan's army promise an answer worth tracking. Builds on: "No Egyptian peasant voluntarily joined Mehmed Ali's army."

The claim that the French Revolution "had transformed the ethos and size of the French army, and had based it spiritually and physically at the heart of the nation" might be correct. It might also be true to argue that with the outbreak of the Revolutionary Wars, "the army assumed simultaneously the defense both of France and of the new order, and that in consequence all three – army, nation, and Revolution – were identified together." This, however, does not mean that the French peasants accepted service in the colors without hesitation. Indeed, "for many Frenchmen the service demanded by the government quickly assumed the guise of a new and unwelcome corvée, a tax in blood to a distant and impersonal master, imposed in the name of a national cause that they understood only in the dimmest terms."

XREF: Echoes the earlier highlight at loc 1359 that no Egyptian peasant voluntarily joined Mehmed Ali's army; both feature subjects resisting conscription despite official nationalist narratives. Builds on: "No Egyptian peasant voluntarily joined Mehmed Ali's army."

If the comparison between the two armies shows that in both of them the distance was great between the poor, oppressed soldiers and their alien, impersonal despot, there is, however, a crucial difference between the two armies. This concerned the type of people who lay between the soldiers and their distant sovereign, viz. the officers. Napoleon was successful in bringing together members of the old nobility and the new, rising bourgeoisie and in making a more-or-less homogenous officer corps that was loyal to his person.

XREF: Contrasts with Mehmed Ali's army at loc 1306 and 1323, which remained ethnically segregated by Turkish officers. Builds on: "The army's character derives from officer-corps composition, not its commander."

In that respect Mehmed Ali's army was different. Two crucial features characterized his officers. Like Napoleon's, they were loyal to their master, owing him allegiance and devotion, and strove to appease him and his family. However, unlike the Emperor's officers, they were not from or of the country they were defending. Being themselves newcomers to Egypt, the officers in Mehmed Ali's army had no roots in the country that they were supposedly fighting for and the ethnic and linguistic differences that separated them from their soldiers made any attempt to convince the soldiers of any nationalistic argument nearly impossible.

Builds on: "Ibrahim reconsidered universal conscription to preserve experienced soldiers."

As early as the mid-1830s, when John Bowring visited Egypt, the resentment of Egyptians, in the full sense of the term, against their Turkish-speaking rulers was starting to become obvious, mainly in the army. "An Arab soldier of the last generation was wholly at the mercy of his Turkish officer; it is so no longer . . . [T]he whole character of the population is undergoing a silent but obvious change. The Egyptian element is gradually replacing the Turkish . . . " By the late 1870s this "Egyptian element" had acquired enough self-consciousness such that it "dared to acknowledge its own existence," and to express itself in open rebellion. The 'Urābī Revolution of 1881–2, in addition to being a revolution by various sectors of the urban and rural population against European dual control, was also a revolt of these estranged Arabic-speaking fellah officers against their Turkish-speaking superiors.

XREF: Builds directly on loc 1306 ('Ethnic Turkish officer dominance fueled the Arab fellahin officers' revolt') and loc 1328 ('Ethnic quotas barred Egyptians from senior military ranks'), now giving the chronological and political payoff. Pays off: "Ibrahim reconsidered universal conscription to preserve experienced soldiers."

In that respect, the main difference between the Pasha's army and that of Napoleon is that whereas the former preceded the national bourgeois revolution, the latter succeeded it. It is this difference that accounts for the fact that when fighting for "Egypt" the soldiers in Mehmed Ali's army were marching under banners with the Pasha's name inscribed on them, while the French soldiers, when fighting what were essentially Napoleon's wars and not those of the Revolution, did so under the tricolored standards of the Revolution.

Builds on: "Napoleon fused nobility and bourgeoisie into a loyal officer corps."

It could be argued, however, that Mehmed Ali's army was instrumental in propagating the idea of Egyptian nationalism, albeit unwittingly. It did this not because the Pasha, his son, or any of their chief military commanders thought of the various wars they waged as "national"; the dynastic aspect of these successive military confrontations, as was shown above, was clear to all to see, and Ibrahim, in spite of his often-quoted "Egyptian" sentiments, had no doubts about it. … Nevertheless, the army did unwittingly contribute to the rise of Egyptian nationalism by homogenizing the experience of tens of thousands of Egyptians over a period that exceeded twenty years by instilling in them the feeling of hatred of the "Ottomans," and thus helped in their collective "imagination" of the nation. This creation of the "other" that wars are singularly successful at doing was operational in Mehmed Ali's army not in directing the men's sentiments of animosity against the army of the Greek rebels, or the Wahhabi brigands, let alone the army of the Ottoman Sultan, but against their own Turkish-speaking officers. … These feelings of animosity towards the "Ottoman" eventually came to fruition two or three generations later when the frustrated leaders of these fellah-soldiers, the middle-ranking, Arabic-speaking officers, broke out in open rebellion together with other disgruntled members of Egyptian society against Turco-Circassian domination.

XREF: Pays off loc 1368 (anti-Turkish nationalism emerged among fellah officers) by tracing that sentiment back to its army-instilled origins decades earlier. Builds on: "Anti-Turkish Egyptian nationalism emerged first among fellah army officers."

The Pasha's officers might have had different origins and social backgrounds from the men they led. They also might have formed conflicting factions and cliques. They were, however, extremely loyal to the Pasha and to members of his family. The stipulation that no evlad-ɩ Arab be promoted to senior ranks might have created a rift between soldiers and officers and weakened the link that the officers might have had with the land on which they were serving: that stipulation, however, was crucial for the creation of a loyal officer corps. By inviting "Ottomans" to be employed in his service, by opening schools in which young men from various parts of the Ottoman world were given subsidized and sometimes even free education, by employing these men in his bureaucracy and army and by further promoting those people up to the higher ranks of the military, Mehmed Ali succeeded in founding an elite which was deeply dependent on the Pasha and firmly loyal to him.

Builds on: "Ethnic quotas barred Egyptians from senior military ranks."

Moreover, the army that the Pasha established benefited from a remarkable working relationship between Mehmed Ali and his son, Ibrahim Pasha. Occasionally tensions would surface between father and son, but on the whole and for the best part of the Pasha's rule the relationship between these two remarkable men was amicable, and it allowed Mehmed Ali to devote his energy to the exploitation of the province's manpower to enhance agricultural and commercial revenues, while leaving for his son the task of exploiting the services of the male population for the military.

Furthermore, when the Sultan decided to seek the assistance of Europeans in helping him create his new Mansure army, these were employed only as advisors or instructors and none of them was allowed to assume posts even half as important as that of Süleyman Pasha in Egypt. Whether because of religious reasons, or the sense of pride and jealousy with which the Ottomans regarded their military past, when Europeans were employed in Sultan Mahmud's new army every effort was made to ensure, as an official directive put it, that "foreign officers will not gain influence and independence. Thus they shall have authority only in matters of training, and in all matters of command, discipline, and the like they shall operate only through . . . Ottoman officers." This inferior position of the Europeans who were employed in the new army was also reflected in the low salaries that they were paid: whereas Süleyman Pasha was said to receive a monthly salary of 17,500 piasters, his compatriot, Gaillard, who was Sultan Mahmud's chief infantry instructor, received less than one-tenth that amount.

DEFINE: Shows how the Ottoman model of employing European advisors contrasted with the Egyptian case where Süleyman Pasha rose to high command, defining the ceiling placed on foreign military influence.

In 1834, therefore, the School for Military Science (Mekteb-i Ulum-u Harbiye) was opened, although initial problems arising from opposition by leading dignitaries, as well as lack of funds, books, qualified teachers and a place suitable for instruction, all meant that the school came into real existence only in October 1837. Even then its curriculum was limited to such traditional subjects as reading, writing, arithmetic, Arabic, and military tactics.

There are, however, much more important reasons for the contrasting performances of the two armies. First, there was the important factor that the Mansure army of the Sultan lacked a commander of the caliber of Ibrahim Pasha. Second, although the army of the Sultan had been able to secure the services of some European advisors, these were neither authorized nor trusted enough to be given high positions in the army; this at a time when Süleyman Pasha had been able to rise up in the military hierarchy until he became second-in-command after Ibrahim Pasha. Third, the Ottoman army never witnessed anything like the superb working relationship between Mehmed Ali, Ibrahim Pasha and Süleyman Pasha; instead, it was a battle-ground for intrigues and internal fights among various officials. A significant factor in the defeat of the Ottoman army in the battle of Horns, for example, was the fact that the Serasker, Husrev Pasha, was jealous of the authority of Hüseyin Pasha, who was appointed as Commander-in-Chief of the army that was to fight Ibrahim Pasha. To curb his influence, Husrev had Mehmed Pasha, one of his protégés, appointed to Hüseyin's staff as second-in-command although the two men could neither work together nor agree on common tactics.

XREF: Extends earlier claims about nepotism and patronage shaping the Egyptian army (loc 922, 925, 930) — here the contrast is inverted to show the Ottoman side suffered comparable dysfunction from intrigue. Builds on: "Nepotism was integral to this army's functioning, not an aberration."

His mission was not successful, however, since Britain, the most important player among the Powers, agreed to back the Sultan only if Mehmed Ali declared himself independent.

Pays off: "Egyptian context explains the gap between plan and execution."

The Sultan's policy was therefore based on the principle of avoiding direct confrontation with Ibrahim Pasha's army and of seeking instead to threaten Syria by land and sea so as to provoke an uprising among the inhabitants there. This policy was based on erroneous and misleading information sent by Hafiz Pasha, Commander-in-Chief of forces in Anatolia, who pointed to the imminence of an uprising against Mehmed Ali's rule in Syria. The Sultan amassed a sizeable force composed of local Turkish and Kurdish tribesmen from southern Anatolia whose mere presence was hoped to spark such a revolt. In the event, the Syrians were too cowed by Ibrahim's troops to revolt against Egyptian rule.

Builds on: "Palmerston's consuls often knew less than his policy demanded."

On more than one occasion Hafiz had a chance to disrupt Ibrahim Pasha's movements in preparation for the battle. Instead, his troops "took up battle positions in such a slow and disorganized manner [and] had to be maintained in combat positions for three days and nights while Ibrahim maneuvered in the area." Furthermore, and against the advice of von Moltke who was sent by the Sultan to assist him, Hafiz Pasha ordered his troops to leave their fortified positions and to venture out in open country, which is precisely what Ibrahim wanted them to do. This he did in compliance with the suggestion of his 'ulamā' who first advised him against fighting on a Friday and then deemed it shameful to sit behind the entrenchment and instead urged him to advance against the adversary in the open. Even after committing these grave mistakes, Hafiz could have still salvaged the situation, especially since at one crucial moment Ibrahim's army was lacking in ammunition. However, he missed that opportunity and, again disregarding von Moltke's advice, refused to order the advance of an unbroken column and kept himself busy with stopping the chaotic retreat of his own troops. The result of this extremely incompetent leadership was disastrous for, in von Moltke's description of the battle, "the army of Hafiz Pasha has ceased to exist . . . The Turks threw down their arms and abandoned their artillery and ammunition, flying in every direction." In the event the Ottomans lost all their guns and up to 10,000 prisoners were captured by Ibrahim Pasha.

XREF: Connects to earlier claims about Egyptian and Ottoman armies' internal weaknesses (loc 1384: Ottoman army internal rivalries crippled effectiveness) and to the theme of professional vs. improvised military practice throughout the book. Builds on: "The Ottoman army's internal rivalries crippled its battlefield effectiveness."

By comparing the performance of Mehmed Ali’s army to those of Napoleon and Sultan Mahmud II it is possible to come up with suggestions as to how the Pasha’s army was capable of accomplishing these spectacular victories in spite of the fact that its soldiers were drafted into it against their wishes and used every means at their disposal to resist it. While to argue, as most contemporary observers did, that “the Turkish defeat in the conflict with Muhammed Ali [was due] primarily to the inadequacies of the Ottoman military leadership” might be to stress the point too forcibly, it remains true that Ottoman incompetence and timid military reform contributed significantly to Ibrahim’s victories, and that had the Ottomans been more successful in managing their own armies, Ibrahim Pasha’s career and, indeed, that of his father would seem much less impressive.

XREF: Builds on and nuances the earlier claim at loc 1360 that coerced peasant armies can secure spectacular victories, and at loc 1384 about Ottoman internal rivalries — here the author attributes Ibrahim's wins partly to Ottoman weakness, not merely Egyptian strength. Builds on: "The Ottoman army's internal rivalries crippled its battlefield effectiveness."

As far as he was concerned these were wars that he waged in the name of his father and for the sake of his family. More important than Ibrahim’s sentiments, though, was the very composition of the officer corps that he was leading which, as this chapter has tried to show, was ethnically, linguistically and culturally different from the soldiery. Like their leader, the officers in the Pasha’s army had no doubt that they were serving the Pasha and his family and had no sympathies in common with the men they were commanding. With their origins in different parts of the Ottoman world and having come to Egypt to seek employment in the Pasha’s army and bureaucracy, they tied their own destinies to that of the household they were fighting for.

As far as the fellah-soldiers were concerned, the allegation that this was their army, and that they were fighting for their own sake, would have been the most ludicrous claim they would have heard. For them, nothing could have been further from the truth. The soldiers came to see the army as the most detestable aspect of the Pasha’s already hated regime. They were dragged to serve in it practically for their entire lives, often never to see their families again. During their life-long period of conscription they were ridiculed, beaten and humiliated by their Turkish-speaking officers. They saw the army as an institution that came to represent to them in the most concrete and direct way the atrocious, inhuman and dreadful policies of Mehmed Ali.

Builds on: "Ibrahim reconsidered universal conscription to preserve experienced soldiers."

See the interesting letter in which he boasts about being a commander of an army engaging in battles in which 260 cannons and more than 60,000 guns were being fired. His father reminded him that it was he who had supplied him with these cannons and rifles in the first place

XREF: Connects to the father-son division of labor in empire-building (loc 1379) and Ibrahim's wars as the family's cause (loc 1306). Builds on: "Father-son division of labor deepened Mehmed Ali's empire-building efficiency."

This is a reference to the serious rebellion that broke out against the Pasha's rule in Syria in the first months of 1834 and which took Ibrahim more than a year to subdue

This was the case of Ismail Bey, a major in "Istanbul's" army, and Selim Bey, the brigadier of the Guardia Regiments in the "Egyptian" army. When he found out that his brother was serving in the "enemy's" army, Ismail switched sides and joined the Pasha's forces … Equally interesting is the fact that most of the spy and reconnaissance reports in northern Syria were carried out by officers who were familiar with the region and who had previously been in the Sultan's service

The same situation obtained in the civil service. For example, a scribe who lost his sight as a result of years of hard work in the bureaucracy was also designated as a sakat and also was not entitled to a pension. He would be dismissed as soon as he went completely blind.

XREF: Connects to the earlier claim about conscripted and coerced laborers under Mehmed Ali, extending the theme of state cruelty beyond military conscription into the civil service and disabled workers. Builds on: "Elderly and disabled villagers were executed purely for being useless."

In the second of these reports the soldiers who escaped while disembarking were later found and said they dared to escape because they could not stand their captain who was beating them with and without a reason.

QUESTION: What recourse, if any, did soldiers have against abusive captains? The anecdote suggests desertion was the only effective escape from arbitrary beating.

Palmerston made up his mind as early as September 1832 that if the Sultan is beat his empire may tumble to pieces, and the way in which the fragments may be disposed of may essentially affect the balance of power in Europe; Russia would profit by the scramble, to a degree which might be highly inconvenient to her neighbors. It is true that if we repel Mehemet's advances & the French receive them, and he should hold his ground, French influence will gain strength in Egypt, but after all perhaps that would not do us any great harm till we went to war with France, and then our naval superiority would bring us back the friendship of Mehemet who would not like his navy to be sent to an English port.

XREF: Connects to earlier claims about Palmerston's anti-Egyptian policy (loc 254, 393) — here we see Palmerston's actual strategic reasoning about why the Ottoman empire's collapse mattered to Europe's balance of power.

Palmerston's motto of "the preservation of the integrity of the Ottoman Empire" was his most effective bulwark against possible Russian aggression and was not a "malicious" act directed at Egypt.

XREF: Connects to the earlier claim at loc 254 that Palmerston's anti-Egyptian policy developed only later from other causes, and loc 182 about Palmerston's silence masking later firm policy. Builds on: "Palmerston's anti-Egyptian policy developed only later from other causes."

By drafting that imperial edict, Rasid proved himself to be the one person in the capital who could frustrate Mehmed Ali's ambitions. He did this by beating Mehmed Ali at his own game: that of trying to impress the West, especially Great Britain, of how reform-oriented he was. These reforms, Palmerston believed, were necessary if the Sick Man of Europe, as the Sultan's empire was infamously known, was to regain some of his former strength in order to fight the menacing Russian colossus.

Pays off: "Great-power rivalry turned Egypt's crisis into a European-balance matter."

Mehmed Ali's position vis-à-vis the Ottoman Sultan, on the one hand, and the fellah subjects, on the other, is very similar to that of a feudal lord. Above him loomed the authority of the Sultan, an authority that resembled that of a feudal overlord above that of his vassals and an authority that Mehmed Ali could, and did, challenge. Similarly, the Pasha viewed Egypt as his own personal fief.

DEFINE: The author explains Mehmed Ali's relationship to the Sultan and fellahin through the feudal analogy, framing Egypt as a personal fief.

Palmerston finally found his answer in the person of another rival of Mehmed Ali in Istanbul, a man much less known to the old Pasha in Cairo than Husrev was, but much more resourceful and perceptive of the grave condition of the Empire than either old men had ever been. He was a man of a younger generation who did not inherit their personal, mutual grudges and was much better informed about the European scene and about the interests of the main European player, Great Britain, a fact that was to prove decisive for the future of the Ottoman Empire. This was Mustafa Rasid Pasha, later to become Grand Vizier for the exceptionally long period of six years and one of the most original of the so-called Tanzimat men.

DEFINE: Introduces Mustafa Rasid Pasha as an architect of the Tanzimat reforms, a key figure in the Ottoman-Egyptian rivalry. Builds on: "Great-power rivalry turned Egypt's crisis into a European-balance matter."

In the panic that followed in Istanbul the Grand Admiral, Ahmed Fevzi Pasha, instead of co-ordinating his efforts with those of the Serasker, as had been planned, and effecting a popular uprising among the Syrian population against Mehmed Ali's rule there, decided to head for Alexandria not to bombard it but to hand the entire Ottoman fleet to Mehmed Ali. Thus in little less than a month the Ottoman Empire lost its Sultan, its army, and its navy and Mehmed Ali was left as the single most powerful man in the Empire.

QUESTION: Why would Fevzi Pasha defect so dramatically? This suggests his loyalty to the sultan was outweighed by some grievance or calculation — worth chasing the motive. Builds on: "Great-power rivalry turned Egypt's crisis into a European-balance matter."

Palmerston, however, was concerned above all about the dangers that the Pasha's territorial expansion were causing to Istanbul. These military activities, Palmerston rightly believed, were pushing Istanbul to seek assistance from the Russians who were only too eager to provide the Sultan with all the help he needed, thus giving them the perfect opportunity to interfere in Ottoman affairs. It was the prospect of Russia's increased influence in Istanbul and its southward expansion towards India rather than any loss of actual or potential markets in the eastern Mediterranean that inflamed Palmerston's feelings against Mehmed Ali's monopoly policies.

Builds on: "Great-power rivalry turned Egypt's crisis into a European-balance matter."

The wars that the Pasha fought, and in particular those that were waged against the Ottoman Sultan, could not therefore be viewed as wars of national independence, aimed at liberating the Egyptians from the "Turkish yoke," nor could they be compared to those that the Greeks fought against the Sultan. Not only would the thousands of fellahin who made up the bulk of his fighting force have found this claim difficult to believe, but also the Pasha himself could think of these wars only along dynastic lines.

XREF: Builds directly on the earlier claims about ambivalence toward the sultan reflecting strategic rebellion (loc 104) and Mehmed Ali's inability to conceive of himself as rebelling (loc 261). Builds on: "Mehmed Ali could not conceive of himself as rebelling against the sultan."

In other words, is it possible to view the wars that the Pasha waged during his illustrious career, and specifically against Sultan Mahmud II, not as wars of independence as is often claimed but as an example of an inter-Ottoman rivalry, or even a civil war within the Ottoman Empire?

QUESTION: This reframing question challenges the standard nationalist narrative—worth pursuing how the civil-war lens changes interpretation of these campaigns. XREF: Connects to earlier claims that Mehmed Ali's wars pursued dynastic ambition (loc 1537) and that historians dispute independence versus imperial expansion motives (loc 199). Builds on: "Historians debate whether Mehmed Ali's wars sought independence or imperial expansion."

The way Mehmed Ali organized the government of his province, Egypt, and the manner in which he reaped its potential wealth immediately threw into high relief the inefficiency and corruption of the central government in Istanbul. The developments and innovations that the Pasha introduced in Egypt were not only unprecedented in the Ottoman Empire; they also ushered in a new conception of government which was essentially interventionist rather than merely preservationist in nature. The new bureaucracy, the modern schooling system, the health system and above all the new model army that the Pasha founded in Egypt all pushed the realms of government into unchartered waters seldom navigated by an Ottoman government before.

XREF: Builds on earlier claims about Mehmed Ali's centralized Egypt rivaling Istanbul's provincial control and his state expansion. This highlight explicitly contrasts the Pasha's interventionist governance with the Ottomans' preservationist model. DEFINE: Introduces the interventionist-versus-preservationist distinction as a way of classifying government philosophy under Mehmed Ali.

For while Cairo commanded a smaller proportion of the overall revenue of the Empire, it was being turned into a more efficient and vibrant centre which diverted more and more resources away from Istanbul. It was this ability of Mehmed Ali’s government to extract more revenue and to mobilize the resources of his province that enabled him to invade Syria.

XREF: Builds on the earlier claims about Mehmed Ali's land reform, monopolies, and state expansion multiplying revenue, showing how this fiscal advantage redirected imperial resources toward Cairo and away from the Ottoman capital. Builds on: "State monopolies on staples multiplied Egypt's revenue sixfold."

The Pasha’s opinions about his Egyptian subjects are probably best shown by reviewing the rationale behind his educational policies. In spite of the fact that the Pasha is often praised for spreading education, opening one school after the other, sending students to Europe and founding a modern press and the first regular newspaper in the East, he still had strong reservations regarding educating the masses. In a letter to his son, Ibrahim, answering his request to open new schools and to admit more native Egyptians, the Pasha said that he had no intention of spreading education among the masses in Egypt. He told his son to look at what happened to European monarchs when they attempted to educate their poor. He added that he should satisfy himself with educating a limited number of people who could assume key positions in his administration and give up ideas about generalizing education.

DEFINE: The contrast between the Pasha's praised educational expansion and his explicit refusal to educate common Egyptians for fear of emulating European monarchs' troubles with their poor. Builds on: "Muhammad Ali's army briefly extended Egyptian control across the eastern Mediterranean."

In short, Mehmed Ali’s position vis-à-vis the Ottoman Sultan, on the one hand, and the fellah subjects, on the other, is very similar to that of a feudal lord. Above him loomed the authority of the Sultan, an authority that resembled that of a feudal overlord above that of his vassals and an authority that Mehmed Ali could, and did, challenge. Similarly, the Pasha viewed Egypt as his own personal fief.

XREF: Overlaps with the earlier claim at loc 1537 that 'Mehmed Ali's autonomy mirrored feudal vassalage toward the sultan'; this highlight extends the feudal analogy to encompass his relationship with fellah subjects as a personal fief. Builds on: "Great-power rivalry turned Egypt's crisis into a European-balance matter."

These were the reasons he put to the British government for his asking for independence from the Ottoman Empire. There is nothing here or elsewhere in the contemporary documents to show that he had any illusions about the nature of his struggle with the Sultan. That struggle was a dynastic one and it was conceived of as such by him and his contemporaries.

XREF: Connects to earlier claims about Mehmed Ali pursuing dynastic ambition (loc 263, 1537) and ambivalence reflecting strategic rebellion rather than identity crisis (loc 41, 104). Pays off: "Great-power rivalry turned Egypt's crisis into a European-balance matter."

The wars that the Pasha fought, and in particular those that were waged against the Ottoman Sultan, could not therefore be viewed as wars of national independence, aimed at liberating the Egyptians from the “Turkish yoke,” nor could they be compared to those that the Greeks fought against the Sultan. Not only would the thousands of fellahin who made up the bulk of his fighting force have found this claim difficult to believe, but also the Pasha himself could think of these wars only along dynastic lines. He repeatedly said that what he was seeking to do was to foil the intrigues directed against “our family,” and hoped for nothing more than to “strengthen the foundations of my dynasty,” and to “carve a place for my family and my dynasty’s families in history to be remembered in four or five centuries’ time.”

XREF: Builds directly on the dynastic-struggle framing at loc 1551 and the earlier claims about fellahin resisting conscription and lacking nationalist motives. Builds on: "Mehmed Ali's fight with the Sultan was a dynastic struggle, not national war."

If one sees Mehmed Ali as a governor of an Ottoman province who was constantly concerned about his position within the Empire and was anxious about the future of his family after his death, as he himself certainly was, then the person who appears as the Pasha’s nemesis whom he spent all his life fighting was not Sultan Mahmud, not even Lord Palmerston, the British Foreign Secretary (to whom we will turn shortly), but Mehmed Husrev Pasha, his old enemy whom he first encountered in 1801 and who since then had been appointed as governor of various provinces in Anatolia and Rumelia, as Grand Admiral of the Ottoman navy, who eventually became Grand Vizier more than once in his long career of public service. In fact, the careers and mentalities of both men appear remarkably similar: both were keen, yet distant, observers of the European scene; both were interested in military reform; and both were concerned about the fate of the Empire and eager to help defend it.

XREF: Builds on earlier claim at loc 423 about Husrev Pasha training Mamluks in French style, and loc 1551 about the dynastic struggle framing. Builds on: "Husrev Pasha trained Mamluks in French military style using French officers."

After months of trying to work together, Ibrahim wrote to his father's agent in Istanbul, Najib Efendi, informing him that there was little chance of the success of the joint efforts of the Egyptian and Ottoman naval forces since their commands were not unified. He added that they could not be unified or coordinated, however, because of the "old and well-entrenched hatred that Husrev has towards our family." In the event, and as we saw in chapter 1 above, Husrev was removed from the command of the Ottoman navy as a result of Mehmed Ali's pressure, adding yet another grudge to those that Husrev held against his old enemy.

XREF: Builds on the earlier claim that the Greek campaign permanently poisoned future Ottoman-Egyptian military cooperation (loc 226). Builds on: "The Greek campaign permanently poisoned future Ottoman-Egyptian military cooperation."

The truce of Kütahia, it has to be remembered, was not a permanent settlement; it was an agreement that neither Sultan nor vali put their signatures to and, moreover, its terms were to be renewed each year, giving Mehmed Ali the feeling that he had still not guaranteed for his family the secure future he was striving for. In addition, Mehmed Ali was required to pay an annual tribute to Istanbul, the amount of which was one of the most contentious issues in the years between 1833 and 1839: while the Sultan was claiming significant arrears, the Pasha refused to pay them. This issue became more acrimonious since the Pasha was convinced that the presence of Husrev as Serasker in Istanbul and his proximity to the Sultan made Mahmud particularly susceptible to his intrigues.

XREF: Connects to the earlier Kütahia claims at loc 182 and loc 252 about the annually renewable agreement leaving Mehmed Ali dependent. Builds on: "Ottoman sultan resisted Egypt's Syrian expansion with armed threats."

In the panic that followed in Istanbul the Grand Admiral, Ahmed Fevzi Pasha, instead of co-ordinating his efforts with those of the Serasker, as had been planned, and effecting a popular uprising among the Syrian population against Mehmed Ali's rule there, decided to head for Alexandria not to bombard it but to hand the entire Ottoman fleet to Mehmed Ali. Thus in little less than a month the Ottoman Empire lost its Sultan, its army, and its navy and Mehmed Ali was left as the single most powerful man in the Empire. He had under his command a powerful army that had so far been victorious in all the major battles it had fought. He also had in Alexandria a combined Ottoman-Egyptian fleet that was capable of establishing effective control over the waters of the eastern Mediterranean and which was an important bargaining card to use in the coming negotiations with Istanbul.

Pays off: "Great-power rivalry turned Egypt's crisis into a European-balance matter."

Husrev, however, was not dismissed; on the contrary, he was stubborn and himself asked his old rival to give up all his possessions and be satisfied with the pashalıks of Egypt alone. When Mehmed Ali received these "peace offers" he wrote to his old enemy wondering what would force him to accept such terms when he had earlier refused better ones offered by Mahmud. He again repeated his demand to Husrev to resign and told him that if he was concerned about his livelihood after retirement, then he, Mehmed Ali, promised to meet all his expenses and those of his household, no matter how large these might be. He even invited him to retire with him in the Hijaz where, he explained, he had built himself two residences, a winter one in Mecca and a summer one in Ṭā'if where they could both retire in peace, devote their time to prayer and meditation, and preserve good and illustrious names for themselves in history books!

XREF: Builds on the earlier claim that Husrev Pasha, not Mahmud, was Mehmed Ali's chief rival (loc 1553). This offer to retire peacefully in the Hijaz shows how personal their rivalry was. Pays off: "Husrev Pasha, not Mahmud, was Mehmed Ali's chief rival."

It was, rather, the unified position that Europe took for the first time in the rivalry between the Sultan and the Egyptian vali: at five in the morning of the very same day that Husrev was to reply to Mehmed Ali’s demands (27 July 1839) the representatives of the five European powers (Great Britain, France, Prussia, Austria and Russia) handed the Grand Vizier a collective note asking the Porte “to suspend any final determination [of the Eastern Question] without their concurrence.” This gave Husrev the breathing space he needed, and with a unified Europe behind him, which denied Mehmed Ali the French assistance he was counting on, he not only rejected the vali’s demands for his own resignation, but repeated his demands that the vali hand back areas he had occupied and return the Ottoman fleet that had defected to Alexandria.

Builds on: "Great-power rivalry turned Egypt's crisis into a European-balance matter."

Finally, on 1 June 1841, the Sultan issued a firman naming Mehmed Ali as governor of Egypt for life and granting his male descendants the hereditary rights of the governorship of Egypt. In addition, though, the firman stipulated that the Pasha reduce the size of his army to 18,000 troops in peace-time. Moreover, the Sultan added that “all the Treaties concluded and to be concluded between my Sublime Porte and the friendly Powers shall be completely executed in the Province of Egypt likewise.”

XREF: Connects to earlier highlights about the Kütahia agreement's annual renewability and Mehmed Ali's hereditary rule achieved through maneuvering (loc 41, 182, 1557). QUESTION: The army reduction to 18,000 and treaty enforcement clauses signal the firman as a settlement mechanism — worth probing how these constraints shaped Egypt's post-1841 military and how the Sultan used the firman to reassert suzerainty.

In that Convention the Ottoman Empire’s import and export duties were fixed, the level of internal duties was drastically reduced and, most importantly, monopolies within all the provinces of the Ottoman Empire were banned. Having effectively stripped the Pasha of his army which formed a significant outlet for his locally produced commodities, forced him to withdraw from Syria, Crete and Arabia, and coerced him to abolish internal monopolies, Britain, it is argued, succeeded in ruining Mehmed Ali’s commercial and industrial enterprises and thus aborted one of the most impressive development projects outside of Europe.

XREF: Connects to earlier highlights about European treaties and firmans dismantling Muhammad Ali's development program, and Britain curbing Mehmed Ali to protect Asian imperial ambitions. SEED: The 1838 Balta Liman treaty's role in aborting a non-European industrialization project offers a compelling case study on how imperial powers deliberately blocked rivals' economic development. Builds on: "Egyptian context explains the gap between plan and execution."

It was the prospect of Russia's increased influence in Istanbul and its southward expansion towards India rather than any loss of actual or potential markets in the eastern Mediterranean that inflamed Palmerston's feelings against Mehmed Ali's monopoly policies. For it was precisely the system of monopolies that the Pasha had introduced, Palmerston again rightly thought, that allowed the Pasha to syphon profits accrued from the agricultural and commercial sectors to the military, thus enabling him to build a powerful army and a formidable navy that he then used to threaten the Sultan's dominions. Ultimately Palmerston's greatest concern was for British possessions in Asia; his greatest fear was that Russia might interfere there. In other words, what was at stake was the British market in Asia rather than the much smaller ones in the eastern Mediterranean.

Builds on: "Great-power rivalry turned Egypt's crisis into a European-balance matter."

Palmerston's worst fears came true: instead of seeing British ships in Istanbul, it was the Russian fleet that was allowed to moor there in February 1833. As if this was not enough Russia and the Ottoman Empire together signed the Hünkar Iskelesi Treaty in July which had a secret clause changing the traditional policy of the Porte of excluding all foreign ships from the Sea of Marmara, by excepting Russian ships from that stipulation.

XREF: Builds on the earlier Palmerston themes: loc 1537 (Palmerston feared Russian influence more than lost markets) and loc 1569 (Palmerston feared Russia in Asia). This highlight shows that fear concretely realized. Pays off: "Palmerston feared Russia in Asia more than lost Mediterranean markets."

Mehmed Ali's suggestion that through this coalition he could better defend Britain's interest against Russia's designs was not to be accepted. It was a risk not worth taking.

Both men believed, and in this they were soon joined by Ponsonby, Palmerston's ambassador in Istanbul, that demanding that the terms of the treaty be applied to Egypt would weaken Mehmed Ali both politically (by treating his dominions as part of the Ottoman Empire) and economically (by drastically limiting his monopoly revenue). Both Britain and the Sultan would stand to benefit from this: Britain would benefit from a reduction in the Ottoman Empire's dependence on the Russian Tsar because of the lowered risk to its stability; the Sultan from the enforced withdrawal of the Pasha's troops from Syria due to the squeeze on his revenue. After lengthy and difficult negotiations the Balta Liman Treaty was signed which, while reducing the Sultan's own revenue was, Rasid thought, a fair price to be paid if the Empire was to be saved from Mehmed Ali's menace without being caught in the Russian trap.

XREF: Connects to earlier claims about the 1838 treaty dismantling Mehmed Ali's economy (loc 1565) and Palmerston's Ottoman-integrity policy (loc 1537). Pays off: "The 1838 treaty dismantled Mehmed Ali's economy to ruin his enterprise."

For his part, Mehmed Ali was aware that his continued existence depended on British support. This support could have been secured if he had confined himself to Egypt; his expansionary policy, however, was necessarily harmful to Britain's interests. This he seems to have realized but it also appears that he had managed to fool himself into thinking that if he were allowed to annex Syria and Mesopotamia in addition to Egypt, he would then be able – together with Persia and the Sultan in Istanbul – to pose a united front that would repulse any Russian move against India.

Pays off: "The Egyptian ruler acknowledged no master throughout his career."

During the Morean war he wrote to Nagib Efendi in Istanbul telling him “although I may be well versed in European mercantile affairs, I am ignorant when it comes to its political situation” (Bahr Barra 12/7, on 14 Ra 1243/6 October 1827). To contemplate that Britain might be agreeing with Russia on the partition of the Ottoman Empire shows that he was still as ignorant of the European “political situation” in 1839 as he had been fifteen years earlier.

Pays off: "Mehmed Ali's caution stemmed from conflicting European messages and ignorance."

There are various letters between Ibrahim and his father to show how they tried to delay work on the expedition and to confuse the various British officials in matters related to the project. See, for example, S/5/47/1/547 on 14 Z 1250/13 April 1835 from Mehmed Ali to Ibrahim in which he tells him frankly that he does not know what to do about continued British requests for assistance in this matter. His son's reply is in Sham 31/7, on 7 M 1251/5 May 1835. In this letter Ibrahim conjectured that the heavy equipment which he heard the British were downloading on the Mediterranean coast and moving across the desert to the Euphrates was needed to build a military outpost to control Baghdad. … Alternatively, he suggested to his father, the British might be interested in simply having a fortress to keep their equipment in. “In this case,” he added, “we can suggest that we keep this equipment for them and try to convince them to give up the idea.” It appears, therefore, that the political aspect of the whole expedition, that of preventing a confrontation between Mehmed Ali and the Sultan which it was feared would prompt Mahmud to ask again for Russian help (see Ingram, Great Game, pp. 292–9), was not entirely lost on Ibrahim and his father.

There are therefore various factors that contributed to the positive image that Mehmed Ali has received throughout the ages. Besides his usefulness to nationalist historiography where he is depicted either as a founding father, a liberal legislator, or a romantic hero, the Pasha had the good fortune to have lived till the age of eighty. His long and, as this book has tried to argue, successful career (for only if one accepts the nationalist argument would the Pasha's efforts look thwarted and frustrated) offers numerous episodes and material that historians could chew on. In addition, and as has been shown throughout this book, the Pasha was able to manipulate his various interlocutors and successfully influenced their portrayal of him.

XREF: Connects to the earlier claims about Ibrahim engineering narratives to immortalize Mehmed Ali's dynasty, and King Fouad curating archives to craft a flattering dynastic narrative. Builds on: "Ibrahim engineered historical narratives to immortalize Mehmed Ali's dynasty."

As was shown with the apparently trivial example of sentry guards mentioned in chapters 4 and 5 the policy of surveillance that was crucial for the disciplining of the army was never as neatly and unproblematically implemented as Foucault or Mitchell have argued: it was constantly compromised by the activity of the one minor agent who was supposed to carry it through, the sentry guard.

XREF: Builds on the recurring theme that Egypt's programs failed at implementation despite impressive design (loc 1179), and on the gap between plan and execution (loc 41). Pays off: "Mehmed Ali's grand programs failed at implementation despite impressive design."

Not that the authorities were helpless in confronting these repeated acts of resistance and defiance; as we have seen, the Pasha and his officials passed numerous decrees to curb the phenomenon of desertion and to punish all acts of insurrection that they found most alarming and undermining to the whole performance of the entire army. Power, in other words, as much as it attempts to silence, to be all-inclusive and to penetrate minds and control bodies, is always constantly negotiated, suspended, and resisted.

XREF: Connects to earlier claims about resistance (loc 92, 460, 471, 593, 1306) showing that despite coercive decrees, power was never totalizing. Builds on: "Conscription's resistance forced Egypt's shift to subtle control techniques."

Realizing that he lacked an effective military force that would enable him to rebuff any attempt by Istanbul to dislodge him forcibly from his wealthy province, he made numerous attempts to found one, culminating in the crucial attempt to create a modern army based on conscripted fellahin in 1820–1. Once he had taken that fateful decision, not only was the efficiency of his administration and its ability to affect and touch the daily lives of the average Egyptians greatly enhanced; his relationship with the Sultan in Istanbul was also radically changed.

Builds on: "Conscription and modern state institutions created Muhammad Ali's new army."

British hostility to Mehmed Ali was caused by his military expansion that was seen in London and Bombay as threatening British possessions in Asia by giving the Russians a pretext to interfere at their expense in Istanbul.

Builds on: "Egyptian context explains the gap between plan and execution."

His efforts in this regard were crowned with success when in 1841 the Sultan, with the acquiescence of Britain, granted him a firman bestowing on him the hereditary rule of Egypt.

Pays off: "The 1841 firman formalized Mehmed Ali's hereditary governorship under constraints."

As was shown above, the crucial turning point came during the Greek war when he first agreed to send some of his newly trained troops to fight alongside the Sultan's forces; after suffering from the major disaster of Navarino in 1827, he seems to have decided not to assist the Sultan any more and to engage in his own military exploits instead, even if these were at the expense of the Sultan himself.

XREF: Builds directly on loc 239 ('Navarino destroyed the Ottoman fleet in under three hours') and loc 226 ('The Greek campaign permanently poisoned future Ottoman-Egyptian military cooperation'). QUESTION: Was Mehmed Ali's decision to abandon the Sultan triggered primarily by military loss or by political calculation about British reactions? Builds on: "Three Ottoman slights hardened Mehmed Ali toward final rupture."

One such problem with the nationalist argument insofar as it pertains to Mehmed Ali's army was the fact that the soldiers, far from rushing enthusiastically to join the colors and defend the nation, came to view conscription as a heavy tax exacted by an already oppressive and intolerant regime that they found it difficult to sympathize with.

XREF: Directly parallels and deepens loc 1359 'No Egyptian peasant voluntarily joined Mehmed Ali's army' and loc 1394 'Conscripts regarded the army as the regime's most detestable institution' — this highlight explicitly diagnoses the nationalist argument's flaw. QUESTION: The highlight contrasts nationalist framing with soldiers' actual perceptions but notes soldiers 'found it difficult to sympathize' — worth probing what, if anything, would have made them sympathize. Builds on: "No Egyptian peasant voluntarily joined Mehmed Ali's army."

The soldiers gradually came to see their own commanding officers and not the enemy they were fighting as the "other." How does the nationalist discourse explain the fact that the Egyptian soldiers resisted serving in the army, allegedly the national institution, or that they saw their own officers and not the Ottoman army as the other?

XREF: Connects to loc 1336: Egyptian officers were closer to their Ottoman enemies than their own troops — officers themselves were ethnically alien to fellahin conscripts.

For like the British viceroys in the sub-continent Mehmed Ali "hated disorder and corruption and misgovernment. Like them, he desired freedom in order that a new and better form of government might be framed."

XREF: Connects to earlier claims about Mehmed Ali's strategic rebellion being detached from identity crisis (loc 41, 104) — this framing shows his 'desire for freedom' aimed at building better government, consistent with his reform agenda.

Dodwell, therefore, offers a good example of a British historian who had a wonderful topic at hand that allowed him to look back a hundred years and nostalgically write about a time when Britannia could comfortably and uncontestedly rule the waves and when she was still confident that she could carry the "white man's burden." In other words, Dodwell's book is as much a book on British imperial history as it is a study of the Egyptian Pasha.

XREF: Connects to loc 171 about King Fouad curating archival documents for a flattering dynastic narrative — both show how historians' projects serve their own political/cultural purposes.

For a long time I have been engaged in composing the history of my life. During every moment which I can snatch from public business, from the affairs of my people, I am attended by a secretary, whose sole employment is to write down what I dictate, in my own words; and to obviate the objections which might be urged against a history of so long a period, composed from recollection, I may remark that nature has endowed me with a very strong memory. I can describe, as if they occurred yesterday, events which took place forty years ago. In consequence, my biography will be very full. It will contain the history of my youth, before my arrival in Egypt. I shall describe the state of this country when I came into it; and all the events of any importance, which happened during my military expeditions in Nubia, Sennar, Kordofan, the Hejaz, and Syria."

St. John did not fall in the trap, however, and his book did not proceed chronologically following the Pasha from his childhood to his old age, the narration culminating with his different military adventures. More than a hundred years after his death, though, books are still being written which, having been based on an archival material that had been cleverly selected in the first place, appear as if they had been dictated by the Pasha himself, and in his own words.

XREF: Builds on the earlier claim that a writer's narrative order can subvert a subject's mystique (loc 66). SEED: The observation that even modern books reproduce the Pasha's chosen self-narrative offers a research angle on how archives bias historiography. Builds on: "A writer's narrative order can subvert a subject's mystique."

Instead, this book, by concentrating on his army, the key institution around which all his reforms were centered, challenged the nationalist version of Egyptian history that sees in Mehmed Ali a proto-nationalist leader. It argued that the Pasha did not aim to achieve independence for "Egypt," but intended to carve out a small empire for himself and for his children after him. It also argued that Great Britain, who is usually taken to have opposed Mehmed Ali ferociously and to have "prevented Egypt from reaping the fruits of her military victories" was not antagonistic to the Pasha's "reform" policies in Egypt, but was against his empire-building efforts that she saw as challenging and endangering her own possessions in Asia.

Pays off: "Great-power rivalry turned Egypt's crisis into a European-balance matter."

It argued that not only was Egypt technically and legally an Ottoman province, but that Mehmed Ali and his officials were also "Ottomans": they originated from different parts of the Ottoman Empire, spoke Turkish, were familiar with the history of the Empire and of the dangers that confronted it, and thought of themselves in Ottoman terms, their eyes set on horizons that were essentially those of the Ottoman world. Seen in this light the career of Mehmed Ali appears not as that of a national leader who fought hard to deliver Egypt from the heavy burden of foreign oppression, but as a problematic reformer of the Ottoman Empire who, through the numerous changes he managed to effect in the Egyptian economy and society, showed the administrators in Istanbul an example of how to introduce much-needed reforms in the central lands of the Empire. In so doing, Mehmed Ali was not moved by any desire to improve the lot of the Egyptians, let alone to deliver them from "foreign oppression," but by his constant, pressing desire to make more secure his precarious position as governor of Egypt.

XREF: Builds on earlier claims at loc 106 and 1671 that Egypt's elite belonged to the Ottoman world and that Mehmed Ali sought reform rather than freedom. Builds on: "Ottoman-era Egypt was a vibrant society embedded in empire."

In an article appearing in August 1844 it commented on the possibility of the Pasha's death and on the numerous services he had afforded the British Empire. It said, "Even when we were battering down his forts and beating his troops, the old Pacha escorted the mail-bags and passengers across the desert as if nothing had happened . . . We are glad that Mehmet Ali is . . . smoking his pipe, levying taxes, and abusing his councils in Alexandria."

XREF: Connects to the earlier claims about British opposition targeting Mehmed Ali's expansion rather than his reforms (loc 1686), suggesting British sentiment toward him was genuinely mixed.

Furthermore, and contrary to the attractive nationalist allegation that Mehmed Ali's efforts were frustrated by Great Britain, this book has attempted to show that his policies in Egypt did in fact benefit Britain: through allowing more and more British goods to find their way to Egyptian markets (albeit through him as sole intermediary), through constantly wooing British officials, and above all through protecting British merchants resident in Egypt and establishing a state of law and order in Egypt that secured British overland communication with India. As was shown above, British hostility to Mehmed Ali was caused by his military expansion that was seen in London and Bombay as threatening British possessions in Asia by giving the Russians a pretext to interfere at their expense in Istanbul.

XREF: Contrasts with the many earlier highlights about Palmerston's hostility and British containment of Mehmed Ali (e.g., loc 41, 254, 1667). The book argues British hostility stemmed specifically from his military expansion, not his domestic rule. Builds on: "British opposition targeted Mehmed Ali's expansion, not his reforms."

Moreover, the main criticism that this book has leveled against the nationalist version of Egyptian history is its assumption that "Egypt" has always had a unified, self-contained, clearly recognizable identity, and that its inhabitants have always realized – through their strong attachment to its soil, and through their conscious links to its history that they are, and have always been, clearly and exclusively "Egyptians." In other words, the main problem of Egyptian nationalist historiography, like all nationalist historiographies, is the assumption that Egypt is an undivided subject and that the Egyptian nation is a primordial, eternal entity possessing a unified, conscious will potentially capable of autonomy and sovereignty. Studying the army of Egypt in the first half of the nineteenth century, an army that is supposed to have been the national institution par excellence, this book found no evidence that this central institution functioned along national lines.

XREF: Builds on the book's running critique of nationalist historiography (loc 103, 1095) and the claim that the army did not function along national lines (loc 93, 1670). Builds on: "Nationalist historians overstate soldiers' willingness to die for "Egypt.""

This book, however, has also argued that "Egypt," as referring to a nation-state, was not simply a result of a semantic shift brought about by the dominant discourse of nationalism. Neither was the birth of the Egyptian nation in the nineteenth century a result only of the modern state's ability to monopolize the means of violence by reorganizing the administrative and military apparatuses so that it could extend its control over wider areas in a permanent manner. The Egyptian nation was brought into being as a result of a multiplicity of practices and discourses that transformed the administration in Cairo from being interested mainly in taxation and in maintaining law and order to a government devising modern techniques of control and using more effective and more subtle ways of manipulating its population. As we have seen throughout this book by concentrating on the Pasha's army, examples of such novel practices were the issuing of tezkeres which functioned as identity cards that people had to carry all the time in order for the authorities to be able to catch deserters; regularly checking the bodies of conscripts for signs of diseases that were now treated in newly constructed hospitals; subjecting the bodies of the soldiers to a strict regime whereby all their movements were supposed to be subject to control and surveillance.

DEFINE: Clarifies the author's positive theory of how the Egyptian nation came into being — rejecting both nationalist semantic-shift and state-violence monopsony explanations. Pays off: "Egyptian context explains the gap between plan and execution."

Mehmed Ali's army was instrumental in founding the modern Egyptian nation not by enlightening its soldiers as to their true and hidden identity. It was not by fighting their supposedly foreign enemies that Egyptians came to call Egypt their own. Rather, by relying on thousands of Egyptians to man his army, and at the same time by making sure that none of these evlad-ɩ Arab was to be promoted to senior ranks, the Pasha inadvertently helped to homogenize the experience of these thousands of Egyptians in a manner that was crucial in the founding of their "imagined community." The deeply felt sentiments of injustice, frustration and animosity that the Arabic-speaking soldiers and their junior officers had towards the Turkish-speaking military elite was a powerful ingredient in forging the rising national consciousness and was made even more potent by being echoed in the civilian society at large.

XREF: Connects to earlier claims at loc 93 ('Army discipline manufactured Egyptians' national identity rather than revealing it') and loc 1371 ('The army's operations unwittingly forged Egyptian nationalism through anti-Ottoman resentment'). This highlight specifies the mechanism — shared resentment against the Turkish elite. Builds on: "The army's operations unwittingly forged Egyptian nationalism through anti-Ottoman resentment"

Through numerous rebellions and mutinies, and by repeatedly performing small acts of defiance, and, above all, through desertion and countless, tragic acts of self-mutilation, the soldiers showed that they could and did retain for themselves an area from where they could resist power, a territory from which they were able to assert their own wills above a system and a regime that attempted to enslave and dehumanize them.

Pays off: "Mehmed Ali manipulated interlocutors to shape his positive historical image."

Yet the soldiers, by resisting him and his authorities and by undermining his impressive, powerful structure, proved that they were not part of this project, that they were implicated in it against their will, and that they attempted to resist it by all means possible and imaginable.

Builds on: "Soldiers preserved zones of autonomy against totalizing disciplinary power."

Yet the soldiers, by resisting him and his authorities and by undermining his impressive, powerful structure, proved that they were not part of this project, that they were implicated in it against their will, and that they attempted to resist it by all means possible and imaginable. Only if one uncritically believes nationalist accounts of the Pasha and his military machine, could one accept that these soldiers were indeed all the Pasha's men. I have no doubt, however, that he was not their man.

Pays off: "Soldiers preserved zones of autonomy against totalizing disciplinary power."