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."

Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed…, loc. 111