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."

Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed…, loc. 417