Egyptian elites policed inter-class marriage as a destabilizing social crime.

Evidence

Al-`usfür fi al-qafas ends on an interesting note, with the pasha warning Hassan’s cousins not to view this reunion, or the increased allowance, as a reward for behavior that threatened to disrupt the family’s social fabric. He admonishes them instead to keep clear in their minds that the relationship between a son of the bäshawät and a servant is a terribly destabilizing social crime, and that this sort of breach of boundaries should not, in the future, be condoned. — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 955