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."

Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed…, loc. 1346