It soon became obvious to the Pasha that something was going drastically wrong with his plans to raise an army of these Sudanese men. When, for example, he knew that out of 2,400 slaves arriving in Aswan only 1,245 managed to reach Cairo, he said "My wonder! We spend so much energy to fetch these slaves, healthy and capable of work, from remote areas only to perish in our midst and in front of our eyes!" To add to his problems, the Turkish and Albanian soldiers that were sent to the Sudan were not accustomed to the weather there and soon fell victim to dysentery and other fevers. The troops also started to grumble and to demand to be sent back to Egypt. It was then that the Pasha thought for the first time of conscripting the natives of Egypt in order to relieve his Turkish soldiers from this task.

XREF: Connects to the earlier claim about the conscription of Upper Egyptians to spare Turkish soldiers, and to the Sudan conquest's aim of capturing conscripts. This highlight shows the plan's failure actually forced the Pasha to conscript Egyptians. Pays off: "Muhammad Ali invaded Sudan chiefly to capture conscripts, not wealth."

Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed…, loc. 444