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."

Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed…, loc. 926