Barracks served surveillance, discipline, and desertion prevention all at once

Evidence

These problems and others could be avoided, it was believed, if the soldiers were strictly interned in their barracks. Besides holding in check the unruly behavior of the soldiers, thereby helping to calm the civilian population, the barracks helped the authorities to keep a tighter control over the soldiers and assisted in preventing desertions. … However, these new institutions, like their earlier counterparts in Europe, were slow to develop; even by the end of Mehmed Ali’s rule not all soldiers were housed in them. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 660

Categorization

• XREF: Desertion and control of soldiers is central to the reader’s question of how the Egyptian army was held together. Also connects with the earlier point that conscription initially resembled corvée.