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."

Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed…, loc. 696