Egyptian peasant discipline escalated punishment through a multi-tiered supervisory hierarchy

Evidence

‘These officers checked the fallahin daily, and watched them night and day to prevent them from abandoning the village.’ Any peasant failing to perform his task was reported to the government-appointed head of the village, shaykh al-balad. ‘If the shaykh discovered that a fallah had failed to cultivate his fields as required, he punished him by whipping him twenty-five times with the kurbaj. Three days later the shaykh inspected the fallah’s fields once again and if the peasant had not yet completed the necessary cultivation the shaykh was authorised to whip him fifty times. An inspection took place after another three days and this time the negligent fallah received one hundred lashes.’ … A similar hierarchy of duty, supervision, and discipline was instituted for the distribution of crops, the collection of taxes, the provision of men for the army and corvée, and the reporting, questioning, and seizure of any person found outside his village district without a permit and papers of identity. — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 149

Categorization

• CANDY: The exact laddering of lash counts — 25/50/100 for peasants, 200/300 for the village head, 50 for the district official — is a grisly but memorable detail for conversation.