A certain captain, Dervis Ağa by name, once asked a soldier (his servant, hizmetkar, as he called him) to fetch him a water bottle. When the soldier brought him an empty one, he shouted at him, cursing his faith, and beating him on the back of his neck. When he was court-martialled he said defiantly, “If you want to punish me for insulting a fifteen-piaster fellah, then go ahead. As far as I am concerned, the fellah is not worth more than this.” When a certain regiment was dispatched to Damietta and paraded through the city, a Turkish official there publicly cursed the days in which the “blind fellahin” had been made soldiers. He added that they would never be as good as Turkish ones. Some officers cheated their soldiers, selling them goods at ten times their price on the market “until they were left penniless.” The habit of insulting and abusing soldiers was so widespread that Ibrahim had to write and distribute a general pamphlet to all the regiments in Syria reminding the officers that it was due primarily to the “bravery and zeal” of the soldiers that the army was victorious in its numerous battles. He ordered them not to abuse or insult their soldiers and to send them to a court martial (divan) to be tried there according to the laws, rather than take the law into their own hands. He warned the officers that whoever was found violating these orders would be expelled from service altogether.

XREF: Builds on earlier claims about ethnic Turkish officer dominance (loc 1043, 1306, 1328) by demonstrating how this ethnic hierarchy manifested in daily contempt and abuse.

Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed…, loc. 1330