Egypt’s decisive Konia victory masked serious command errors on the field

Evidence

Chapter 4 opens with a description of a key battle that Mehmed Ali’s army fought, the battle of Konia against the Ottoman army (December 1832). Although the Egyptian army had a decisive victory in that battle, it was discovered that serious mistakes were committed by a leading brigadier who participated in the battle and whose performance comes somewhat as a surprise after reading the laws, regulations and training manuals reviewed so far. The chapter takes its lead from this particular incident and seeks to contrast the cohesive, machine-like manner in which the army was supposed to perform as has been described in the previous chapter with various accounts of the manner in which the army did actually perform. This serves to introduce a theme that is further elaborated upon in the following chapter, that of the discrepancy that separated the various military laws from the manner in which they were actually applied. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 124

Categorization

• XREF: This discrepancy between regulations and actual performance parallels the book’s treating chapters 124-125’s law-vs-practice theme; echoes the gap between theory and practice in other military histories read.