Besides open revolt another tactic the fellahin often used was to desert their villages altogether to avoid being taken into the army. As soon as news of the approach of the recruiting party reached a village, "– and it spread over the country like wildfire –" a wave of desertion followed with masses of families fleeing their homes and villages desperately trying to evade the conscription gangs. By the late 1830s this practice was so widespread that entire villages were found completely abandoned leaving behind sad, deplorable villages "buried in their stillness . . . where the dwellings of the poor inhabitants . . . still standing, neither blackened by fire, nor destroyed by war, nor decayed by time, but deprived of their inhabitants [who attempted to avoid the agents of the Pasha] by giving up house and home, and deserting, en masse, the devoted town or village."

Builds on: "Peasants rebelled openly rather than submit to forced conscription."

Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed…, loc. 472