Egyptian military regulations were routinely at odds with soldiers’ actual daily lives

Evidence

The image we have from the various training manuals and military laws reviewed in chapter 3 leaves one with the impression that the barracks, training camps, naval hospitals, and military schools were heavily guarded, tightly controlled, and closely watched. Like the various orders of Mehmed Ali reviewed in the last chapter, however, the laws governing these institutions were not applied without difficulties and invariably there was a considerable discrepancy between how the training manuals wanted the soldier to behave in the military camp and how in fact he spent his daily life. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 1107

Categorization

• QUESTION: This discrepancy between written law and lived practice invites the question—to be answered in the following pages—of just how the soldier’s real barracks life diverged, and whether that undercut discipline.