Mehmed Ali treated legal and disciplinary codes as flexible models, not binding rules

Evidence

Like other spectacles that the Pasha was fond of, legal codes, courts martial and predictable punishments were all part of a new way of imposing order and discipline on society. He seems to have believed that it was in the military that these modern methods of order and discipline could best be tried out. However, being a practical man he also understood that given his limited resources these new techniques of ordering and organizing society should function only as models to be approached as closely as possible and which could, and indeed should, be violated if need be. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 923

Categorization

• XREF: Reverses the discipline-vs-sovereignty legalism distinction; connects to the law merchant materials where extralegal flexible norms govern trade.