Mehmed Ali’s army initially allowed families to follow soldiers to camp

Evidence

So long as the soldiers were in Egypt their wives and children were allowed to follow them from camp to camp and to build shanty-towns close to the training camp, living as best as they could by sharing the meager rations of the soldiers. An estimated 22,000 women and children, for example, are supposed to have lived on the outskirts of the Hankah camp near Abū Za‘bal. Ultimately, however, and mainly for health reasons, this practice was stopped, the shanty-towns appended to the camps were dismantled, and strict regulations were enforced preventing the soldiers from having access to their families. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 657

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

• XREF: The 22,000 dependents at one camp is a striking number that rivals the size of a campaign army; echoes how pre-modern armies traveled with families. Connects to the reader’s interest in how the Egyptian army was built.

Related

• Military recruits’ families briefly followed them as camp shanty-towns before being excluded (similarity 0.90)
• Conscripted soldiers were initially permitted to keep families at camp (similarity 0.89)
• Twenty-two thousand camp followers lived on army camps’ outskirts before being barred (similarity 0.86)
• Attempts to prevent soldiers’ venereal disease failed because wives were permitted in camps (similarity 0.79)
• Family connections swayed Mehmed Ali’s military personnel decisions (similarity 0.79)
• Mehmed Ali’s 130,000-man army forced unprecedented state centralization in Egypt (similarity 0.78)