Mehmed Ali’s state used stamped passes to surveil soldiers and civilians

Evidence

The contrast between the brutality and, arguably, the excessive use of force that the act of the officer in the first case exhibited, on the one hand, and the more impersonal, distant and subtle means of control that the officer in the second case suggested, on the other, should not be read as a movement towards a more humane, “enlightened” application of the law. Rather, it suggests that the idea of the law itself had changed and with it a new conception of discipline and how to enforce it was brought into play. The best example of this new technique of imposing order and discipline that targeted the minds rather than the bodies of the soldiers and that attempted to imprint on them the idea that they were constantly under surveillance was, again, the tezkere: it was declared that once interned, the soldier could not leave the camp unless he had a stamped certificate issued by his commanding officer specifying the nature of the leave and its duration. Local Syrian workers who were performing jobs for the Egyptian authorities there were also ordered to carry such tezkeres “so that if any one of them does something [wrong], he can be caught.” Earlier in 1829 when it was feared that conscripts might escape to Cairo in the hope of finding refuge there, an order was given asking all arrivals in the city to have such stamped tezkeres on them. Even high-ranking officers were ordered to carry stamped certificates all the time. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 668

Categorization

• XREF: The tezkere/stamped-certificate regime resembles the pass systems and internal documentation states use on subject populations; connects to French Algeria’s and other colonial surveillance literature.