Mehmed Ali prioritized officer loyalty so heavily that it produced inefficient officers

Evidence

One of the problems that faced the Pasha in founding his army was how to create a well-trained and reliable officer corps, and it might be said that the problems he faced in creating such a group of men who would lead his soldiers in battle with efficiency and who, at the same time, would owe him respect and loyalty was as serious as the problems he faced in conscripting the peasants into the army. To a large extent, it could also be said that he succeeded in creating such a group of loyal and reliable officers. However, given the high priority he attached to their loyalty, they were often inefficient and many of them made bad officers. Moreover, given the ethnic origins of the majority of them, they were very different and distant from the men they were commanding. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 924

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s stated method: the loyalty-efficiency tradeoff echoes the tension in any household-army system between political reliability and professional competence.