Training manuals, nevertheless, were the tools by which this goal was finally reached. By specifying the detailed manner in which the most basic acts were to be performed, these texts brought about a much stricter way of disciplining the soldiers. Through observing and controlling the most simple act (the glance) of the soldiers, and by manipulating their actions, breaking them down to their constituent units, and then ordering them to be executed according to the signals issued by the officers in the form of the command shouts, the body of the soldier was finally reduced to performing a function similar to that of a cog in a machine. The soldier ceased to be an individual, an integral human being and instead he came to occupy a unified slot, a standard position that did not, in fact, should not differ from that of any other soldier.

Builds on: "Timed command execution synchronized soldiers into coordinated unitary action."

Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed…, loc. 743