Egyptian military law micromanaged even sleep positions and women’s camp lodgings.

Evidence

Different laws and regulations were passed specifying in detail the position of every battalion and company in relation to each other, as well as the positions of every soldier within that of his company. Arts. 32–49 of Kanun-u Seferiye, for example, specifies the formation in which the tents of the entire regiment should be set up. The distance that separates each tent from the one next to it is given as well as the distance that separates the tents of one battalion from those of another. It goes on to specify the number of soldiers in each tent and goes so far as to specify the positions that these soldiers should adopt during their sleep. Even the shabby encampments of the women adjoining those of their husbands at the outskirts of the army camps proper had to be regulated. In a special health report by Clot Bey suggesting measures to stop the spread of contagious diseases, it was ordered that the lodgings of these women “should be lined up in two straight parallel rows with a wide road separating them. The lodgings should also be raised above the ground by a certain, unified height.” — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 714

Categorization

• DEFINE: Kanun-u Seferiye is introduced as the marching/campaign regulations governing tent formation.
• XREF: The micromanaging impulse echoes Foucault’s panoptic discipline on the same theme as this whole chapter, which the writer’s silence corpus has touched on.