It is here that we come to focusing on problems that characterized Mehmed Ali's military authorities and indeed his entire reign: impressive blueprints and programs that gave stunning spectacles of order, but which floundered at the first attempt at implementation. Besides the usual problems that were mentioned in the previous chapters that related to lack of funds, cumbersome bureaucratic regulations, unrealistic demands by the Pasha, and internal divisions among the elite itself (represented by the problems that Clot Bey had with the War Department), this chapter touched on the issue of resistance by the soldiers to the authorities' regulations and concluded with the apparently trivial, but crucial problems that the authorities had with guards and sentries. Passing laws that forbade prostitutes from ever entering or approaching military camps, issuing regulations that prevented soldiers from having access to the outside world, printing tezkeres that soldiers had to have on them if they left military precincts – all were impressive innovations that characterized Mehmed Ali's regime. Impressive as they might be, however, they did not guarantee that the Pasha's will went fulfilled.

XREF: This directly parallels the earlier claim about how official regulations reveal little about how armies actually operated (loc 909), and the gap between model regulations and real practice throughout Mehmed Ali's reign (loc 1141). Pays off: "Model regulations far exceeded real practice throughout Mehmed Ali's reign."

Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed…, loc. 1179